VOL XVIII, No 3 [Winter 1991]

Abusing the King’s English

Robert M. Sebastian, Philadelphia

…here will be an old abusing of God’s patience and the king’s English.

The Merry Wives of Windsor (i.4.5-6)

Although Rex Harrison died over a year ago, some of his fans still regret that, apart from one try in Much Ado About Nothing, he had never done a Shakespearean comedy. With what acerbic suavity would he have retorted to Katherina’s “… and so farewell,” with “What! with my tongue in your tail?” The Taming of the Shrew (ii.1.217). Indeed, Shakespeare would have been delighted by a Harrison rendition of many of the more than a thousand naughty passages that have so diligently been compiled by Eric Partridge in his Shakespeare’s Bawdry. Partridge’s are all instances of intentionally naughty entries. But far more hilarious are those items penned by the Bard that were never intended to shock or amuse a future evil-minded generation such as ours with indelicate, let alone indecent, suggestiveness, Rex Harrison or no!

In Othello (v.2.266), even the most unflappable reader must gasp at the Moor’s offer to Gratiano: “Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt,” nor will his guffaws entirely abate after he learns that butt here means goal. In Twelfth Night (v.1.126), it would appear that Duke Orsino was not fully aware of what was befalling him when he admitted to Olivia that “I partly know the instrument that screws me.” In Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music (I.15), we find the puzzling howler, “Then lullaby, the learned man hath got the lady gay.” Gay is used here as a compliment, but today’s jaded reader will snicker at the line. In King Lear (iii.3.15 et seq.), one is comforted to note that the generous Gloucester is eager to become the wretched Lear’s nurse’s aide, as he assures Edmund that “I will seek him and privily relieve him…the king, my old master, must be relieved.” In Macbeth (v.3.54), your normally prurient theater-goer may well sense a hint of Onan when Macbeth orders the Doctor to “Pull’t off, I say.” In Hamlet (iv.7.85), the King seems to be hinting rather indelicately to Laertes that Lamord, the Norman horseman, had beefed up a bit, when he picturesquely notes that “…he grew into his seat.” Similarly, in Troilus and Cressida (i.3.31-33), Nestor offers Agamemnon this flattering description of a monarch’s royal behind:

With due observance of thy god-like seat,
Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply
Thy latest words.

And never mind that seat in both quotes means throne. In King John (ii.1.413-14), even the gentlest reader may be forgiven for wondering what in the name of propriety is going on in the armies of Austria and France, when the Bastard informs King John that

From north to south
Austria and France shoot in each other’s mouth.

One should note another category made up of various terms and phrases that have a decidedly modern flavor that is not quite what our playwright had intended for them. These are items that may raise the stiffest eyebrows, as in Cymbeline (iii.3.21-2), where the reader may infer that the mail service was just as deficient then as it is today, when Belarius gripes to his sons, Guiderius and Arvigarus,

O! this life
Is nobler than attending for a check,

—or maybe the check was not even in the mail.

Were Shakespeare writing today, he might have to revise some passages in order to avoid misunderstanding, as might be the case with Scarus’s declaration to Antony in Antony and Cleopatra (iv.7.9-10) that

I have yet
Room for six scotches more.

Though Scarus’s reference is to cuts or gashes, today’s in genuous reader might well assume that Scarus was preparing to go on a bender. In the opening chorus of King Henry V, lines 11-12, there is asked

can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France?

No anachronism here, of course, as cockpit refers, not to a part of an airplane, but to an enclosed place for fighting cocks and, in a transferred sense, to a circular theater. When Katharina tells Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew (iii.2.214) “You may be jogging whiles your boots are green,” she was referring to transportation by horse and not to our current physical fitness mania. And the “puke-stocking” mentioned by Prince Henry in 1 Henry IV (ii.4.79-80) is not a reference to the hosiery worn by our kind of jogger, but to a dark woolen cloth. Is there a more up-to-date cliché than tender loving care? In 2 Henry VI (iii.2.279-80), the king issues the command:

Go, Salisbury, and tell them all from me,
I thank them for their tender loving care.

Here are some other noteworthy current terms used by Shakespeare:

good brother — this expression of common present usage is found in Julius Caesar (iv.3.236) where, after Cassius had bidden him good-night, Brutus replies, “Good-night, good brother.”

not so hot — Goneril says this to Regan, King Lear (v. 3.67).

pent-house — Macbeth (i.3.19-20):

Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid.

But pent-house here refers to eyelids, not to a lavish apartment.

eye-sore — The Taming of the Shrew (iii.2.103-4), Baptista to Petrucchio:

Fie! doff this habit, shame to your estate,
eye-sore to our solemn festival.

Also, in The Rape of Lucrece (lines 204-5):

Yea, though I die, the scandal will survive, be an eye-sore in my golden coat.

This contemporary term, incidentally, was first recorded, according to the Second Edition of The Random House Unabridged, around 1250-1300.

to do (someone) wrong — The Rape of Lucrece, line 1462:

And therefore Lucrece swears he did her wrong,

and in King Lear (i.2.186), Edgar complaints:

Some villain hath done me wrong.

Both lines anteceded by centuries Frankie and Johnny, not to mention Mae West.

turn off — in Antony and Cleapatra (iii.6.93-4), Mecaenas tells Octavia:

Only the adulterous Antony, most large
In his abominations, turns you off.

RH-II notes that turn off is slang for “something or someone that makes one unsympathetic or antagonistic,” dating the entry 1680-90.

like to — In Pericles (iv.2.80), Marina says, “To ‘scape his hands where I was like to die.” RH-II labels this current expression to be of South Midland and southern U.S. origin and means “to be on the verge of.”

poop — In Pericles (iv.2.25), as he relates what the “little baggage” did to the Transylvanian in the brothel, Boult says that “she quickly pooped him,” meaning that she overwhelmed him. In today’s slang, pooped has the sense of exhausted, and sometimes worse.

Shakespeare even managed to insert a bit of what sounds like current Anglo-Yiddish slang. In two instances, both found in Venus and Adonis, namely, line 617:

Whose tushes never sheath’s he whetteth still, and line 624:

And whom he strikes his crooked tushes slay,

tushes means tusks. But tush, or tushie, is current slang for buttocks, an apparent alteration of the Yiddish tokhes, of like meaning.

Ah, but it is the unintentional humor we return to for our heartiest laughs! In The Rape of Lucrece, lines 780-81, we know that “he” refers to the sun, but we may be forgiven if we assume that Tarquin is meant, considering that gentleman’s passionate activities of the night before with Lucrece:

The life of purity, the supreme fair,
Ere he arrive his weary’, noontide prick.

Then there is this passage in Troilus and Cressida (i.3.343) that has been distinguished by being placed just before the index to the eleventh edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (New York, W.F. Collier & Son, 1937):

And in such indexes, although small pricks
To their subsequent volumes, there is seen
The baby figure of the giant mass
Of things to come at large.

Could this be a commentary on what an arousal can do for a man’s morale?

Ah, but one final image remains ever green! It is that of a future Rex Harrison in the role of Armado in Love’s Labour’s Lost (v.1.111-13) expressing to Holofernes his feelings toward his monarch, as he avows how he would gladly permit his king “to lean upon my poor shoulder, and with his royal finger, thus dally with my excrement.” Nor is the vividness of this tableau entirely diminished when one notes that, as here used, excrement is a synonym for hair.

It is too cynical to foresee that some irreverent smarty-pants will one day pry and dig and garner further items of unintentional humor out of our supreme poet’s writings? Is it too fanciful to predict that many of the Bard’s words are, even now, lying low awaiting the coming of the inevitable day when they shall become of the bright, new-minted, contemporary expressions of tomorrow?

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Serious crime down, but murders increase.” [From the Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colorado, 11 May 1988. Submitted by Jeff Lovill, Westminster, Colorado.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Other cities around the nation will sponsor crime prevention awareness activities tonight, but not Olean. Candlelight marches, children’s activities and block parties will take place as neighbors unite to speak out against crime prevention across the country.” [From the Olean Times Herald, 7 August 1990. Submitted by Judith Hansen, Olean, New York.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“One thousand marijuana plants have been seized in a joint police investigation near here Monday.” [From the Kitchener-Waterloo (Canada) Record, 6 October 1987. Submitted by Susan Montonen, Kitchener.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“The podium erected in front of building A was surrounded by a semicircle of spectators on wooden chairs.” [From Doctors by Erich Segal, p. 316. Submitted by Eugene P. Healy, Madison, Connecticut.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Each of the four rings were positioned inside each other.” [From an article on laser capability in Job Shop Technology, August 1988. Submitted by Bernard Brenner, Weston, Massachusetts.]

Names of Santa Fe

William H. Dougherty, Santa Fe, New Mexico

According to some authorities, when the present capital of New Mexico was founded by Spanish colonizers in 1610, it was named La Villa Real de Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís. In later versions this grandiloquent title, really more a dedication than a name, sometimes has the definite article la inserted between de and Santa, which changes the meaning from Saint Francis of Assisi’s Royal City of Holy Faith to the Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi. In modern times at least, and possibly since its founding, the capital, no longer royal, has been known simply as Santa Fe. Since Romance derivatives of Latin sanctus mean holy as well as saint, the Spanish name today, like the same name for several towns in countries of Spanish culture, means in English ‘Holy Faith.' Incidentally, English-speaking writers more used to French than to Spanish names often misspell the name: “Sante Fe.”

By whatever name, Santa Fe is nestled in the foothills of a cordilleran spur called the Sangre de Cristos. No one really knows how this mountain range came to be named for the Blood of Christ, but educated guesses are not lacking. At sunset these mountains are sometimes suffused with a rosy glow that some romantis souls like to think could have inspired the descriptive name. However, sixteenth-century Spaniards and their descendants were too literal about their religion and too indifferent to nature to be inspired by sunsets. A more probable explanation attributed to a thoughtful historian named Bill Tate is that cruciform crevasses, in winter filled with snow, that are visible on the mountainside from San Gabriel, the first Spanish capital, reminded Juan de Oñate, the leader of the first successful Spanish colonizing expedition, of the cross he wore to symbolize membership in a lay religious order devoted to reverence for the Precious Blood of Christ. The trouble here is that according to T.M. Pearce’s New Mexico Place Names as late as 1790 the range was called Sierra Madre and has been called by its present name only since the early nineteenth century. The most plausible etymology, in my opinion, suggested by the learned Fr. Benedicto Cuesta among others, is that the range took its name from penitente chapels or shrines in its foothills consecrated to the Redeeming Blood of Christ at a time when in the Spanish empire such chapels were so numerous that Blood of Christ was practically synonymous with chapel.

By modern standards the Spanish colonial and briefly Mexican capital of New Mexico was more a village than a city. Almost as the Spaniards founded their capital on the ruins of an Indian pueblo, the American conquerors of New Mexico built their territorial capital on and around a dilapidated Spanish-Mexican core, little of which remains today. The city of some 55,000 as it exists today derives much more from the town built by Anglos who have been attracted here since the mid nineteenth century than from the Spanish-Mexican colonists and their descendants who populated the tiny frontier capital for over two centuries previously.

The names and architecture of Santa Fe have gone through three parallel stages in a parabolic course. The original architecture was Andalusian filtered through the tastes and customs of Mexico (then called New Spain) and further modified by the materials available and the centuries-old experience of the Pueblo Indians. The walls were of adobe, which to the first Anglos was mud, pure and simple. In north Texas adobe bricks were even called “Dallas stiff-muds.” The roofs were flat and supported by trimmed logs called vigas, and they leaked. To most Victorian Anglo-Americans the houses of Santa Fe, even the sprawling governor’s palace, were at best unrefined and at worst squalid. So in the second stage of construction the “primitive” structures of the Spanish-colonial past were gradually replaced and surrounded by more “proper” architecture. The relatively grand new cathedral, for instance, was built in the style of Archbishop Lamy’s native Provence. Aside from a scattering of historic colonial buildings around and near the plaza, the oldest buildings in Santa Fe tend to be in a style that owes more to the American Midwest and East than to Hispanic or Indian origins. Then came the third stage early in the twentieth century, when Santa Fe was invaded by a more sophisticated, in some cases artistic, cosmopolitan kind of Anglo-American that recognized the esthetic value and appreciated the exotic charm of the surviving bits of the colonial town and began to cultivate a revival. Others, Hispanic and Anglo, came to see in this revival commercial potential, and modified versions of the old Pueblo and Territorial styles have dominated, indeed monopolized, architecture in the capital ever since.

Nomenclature has tended to parallel the physical metamorphoses of Santa Fe. At first and throughout the seventeenth century there were no streets to bear names, only a nameless quasi-street leading a short way from the parish church. A Friar Dominguez is quoted by Adrian H. Bustamente in Santa Fe—History of an Ancient City as describing the villa in 1776, the year of American independence from British rule, as consisting of “many small ranches at various distances from one another, with no plan as to their location, for each owner built as he was able, wished to, or found convenient, now for the little farms they have there, now for small herds of clattle which they keep in corrals of stakes, or else for other reasons.” Such place names as there were applied to clusters of buildings, such as casas reales (“royal houses”), renamed Palace of the Governors by the Anglo-Americans, or Barrio de Analco for the cluster that housed Mexican-Indians. (Analco is Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, and means ‘on the other side’ [of the river].) Roads entering the settlement were called by the names of the towns or places to which they led, such as Camino de Pecos, Camino del Alamo, or Camino de la Canada. And eventually physical features such a main irrigation ditch (acequia madre) or the wall that enclosed the official buildings gave their names to streets associated with these features. But the oldest streets in the modern city date back to the Anglo-American occupation and reconstruction and therefore have such basically English names as: Washington, Lincoln, Palace Avenue, San Francisco Street, Cathedral Place, and so on. These streets and their names correspond to the architecture of the first wave of Anglo-American occupation. Likewise the period of revival of Pueblo-colonial architecture in the twentieth century corresponds to an attempt to revive Spanish, or at least historic nomenclature. So the recently constructed loop around the inner city has been named Paseo de Peralta. The thoroughfare entering town from the south that was originally called Telegraph Street because the telegraph line ran along it and was later renamed College Street because St. Michael’s College was built there is now romantically called Old Santa Fe Trail.

It is in the often hastily constructed and hastily named developments on the edges of Santa Fe that the names are most feverishly given. In Santa Fe, where the Hispanic heritage and population remain considerable, the new pseudo-Spanish names are more apt to be correct than in, say, California or Tucson. Nevertheless, there are many cases of developers’ pidgin. The most common solecisms are those of syntax and grammatical gender. Though there are plenty of examples to show that some namers of streets in Santa Fe are aware that in Spanish a definitive modifier follows the modified word, so that there are streets properly named, for instance, Camino Cerrito, Calle Lorca, or Plaza Fatima, there are other street names that betray oblivion to this grammatical rule, for example: Monte Vista Place or Cielo Vista Court where Monte Vista and Cielo Vista are supposed to mean respectively Mountain View and Sky View but, so far as they signify anything, really mean View Mountain and View Sky or Heaven. Even more common in Santa Fe are names in which adjectives fail to agree as to gender with the nouns they modify, for example: Calle Largo, Calle Lejano, or Calle Contento. This error may be due in part to the English tendency to reduce all unaccented final vowels to schwa and in part due to the fact that Spanish adjectives are listed in dictionaries in their masculine forms only. Also, out of context Spanish adjectives are thought of as masculine.

One can imagine a bulldozer operator as he blades out a road for a new development being hailed by the developer thus: “Hey, Loyd …” (Here I should explain that there is a fairly recent new tendency to give Spanish-surnamed babies jarringly un-Spanish first names, which results in such oddities as Loyd Martinez or Priscilla Chavez. In this practice, I believe, we are happily lagging behind the Brazilians.) “Hey Loyd, how do you say long in Spanish?” To which Loyd Martinez, bilingual, might reply, “Largo.”

“So Long Street would be Largo Calle?” (To the Anglo ear the final o, an a, and perhaps the e of calle are schwa.)

“No, turn it around: Calle Larga.”

“Oh, yeah, now I see it here, in this pocket dictionary—largo.” And knowing calle from previous experience, the Anglo developer jots on his pad Calle Largo. The phonemic distinction between unaccented final a and o goes in one Anglo ear and out the other.

Finally, there are Santa Fe names that are simply pretentious or inept. The Rio Grande, the river in whose valley the capital lies, has been called the Great River in English, maybe partly because Spanish Grande suggests English Grand, but in fact Rio Grande means simply Big River. Great River would be Gran Rio. (That tricky syntax again.) Formally correct but pretentious is the street name Camino del Monte Sol, which before it was paved was sometimes irreverently called Camino del Muddy Soil. Then there is La Fonda, the rather famous Harvey hotel that superseded the old Exchange Hotel when the local Anglos woke up to the touristic value of Spanish nomenclature and architecture. A Mexican newcomer to Santa Fe once told me that he had been much puzzled by hearing rich Anglo tourists extol the charm of La Fonda (in English pronounced like fond plus schwa). In Mexico, he explained, a fonda is the cheapest, grubbiest sort of dive.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Whereas sexologists have previously asked whether the female gentilia resemble those of men, Eve’s Secret suggests that men’s sexual organs may be derived from those of women.” [From a Paladin/Grafton book advertisement in The Guardian, n.d., 1989. Submitted by M. Gautrey, Geneva.]

To the Foot of the Letter, I’m Listening to a Turkish Sermon!

Helen King, Dallas

Charles V held that Spanish should be spoken to the gods, French to men, Italian to the ladies, German to soldiers, English to geese, Hungarian to horses and Bohemian to the Devil … We take it for granted that our language is the most natural mode of expression and we look upon others with tolerant amusement if not hostility.

Noah Jonathan Jacobs in Naming Day in Eden

Man is so much shaped by the language he speaks that he tends to get locked into that particular language structure. As Mr. Jacobs affirms, what does not conform to the rules of one’s native tongue is not just different, it is wrong or at the very least, odd. When I took my first foreign language in high school, I clearly remember being intolerantly amused by the peculiar way Spanish speakers say certain things, which I learned were called idiomatic expressions. They often seemed like idiotic expressions to me.

For example, why would anyone in his right mind ask, “How do you call yourself?” instead of the perfectly sensible, “What’s your name?” and put a question mark not only where it belonged at the end but at the beginning of the sentence—and up-side-down—to boot? Why make a crazy statement like “It makes beautiful,” for “It’s nice weather”? And so on.

I was recently reminded of all this while boning up on my Spanish before traveling with my husband to Central America. Y no tengo pelos en la lengua (‘And I don’t have hair on my tongue: I’m telling you what I think’), that is, llamo al pan pan, y al vino vino (‘I’m calling bread bread and wine wine: I’m calling a spade a spade’)—it’s a muy fascinating language!

In the years since my youthful folly, I have become entranced with the splendid beauty of the Spanish tongue. And once again, as I have refreshed my memory, I have savored the picturesque idiosyncratic verbal constructions of the language. Who cannot become enmeshed in the rich rolling of r’s in a word like ‘railroad,’ ferrocarril? How could one not be astounded by the funny logic of, say, meeting one’s match by encountering the shoestring of one’s shoe: encontrarse con la herma de su zapato? Or who could fail to be entertained while attempting trabalenguas (‘troubled tongues: tongue twisters’) like: Yo no compro coco. Porque como poco coco, poco coco compro. (‘I don’t buy coconut. Since I eat little coconut, I buy little coconut.'), and Mi mama me mima mucho. (‘My mother spoils me a lot.')?

Noah Jonathan Jacobs speaks about “the universality of linguistic chauvinism”:

We characterize unintelligible speech by saying, “That’s Greek to me,” the Russians and Rumanians by “That’s Chinese to me,” the French by “That’s Hebrew to me,” the Germans by “That’s Spanish to me,” and the Poles by “I’m listening to a Turkish sermon.”

[Naming Day in Eden, Noah Jonathon Jacobs, p. 60]

Casting aspersions on them, as opposed to us, finds Spanish-speakers no exceptions to the rule. Take, for instance, the various ways they characterize the concept of “playing dumb”: In Bolivia it is “to become an Italian”: hacerse el italiano; in Colombia the English get it with hacerse el inglés; in Mexico one becomes a gourd—hacerse guaje—and El Salvador’s hacerse el papo equates playing the fool with one who has a double chin; hacerse chino in Equador means ‘to fool someone [by acting like a Chinese].’

On the Continent it is bad’ cess to the British, for in Spain if you are ‘surrounded by Englishmen’ you are being dunned to pay your bills. “Working for the English” means you earn a mere pittance. Ir a la alemana ‘to go German’ is the equivalent of our Dutch treat. And dull wit is un chiste alemán ‘a German joke.’

If one ‘has a rat’ or ‘catches a Turk’ in Spain (tener un ratón; coger una turca) he gets drunk. (Una turca is also ‘a liar.') Getting drunk in Panama, on the other hand, is estar en fuego ‘to be on fire.’

The Basques take verbal beating too, for in Spain una basqueria is ‘a Basque [a dirty trick].’ Vasconcear translates ‘to speak Basque, to jabber.’ I suspect basquear ‘to be nauseated’ has the same source. And if the cost is not clear, hay moros en la costa ‘there are Moors on the coast.’

Insult is not limited just to other nationalities, either. To a Spanish-speaker, a noisy party is una boda de negros ‘a Negro wedding.’ Se armó la de San Quintin indicates a terrible row has taken place.

Adding diminutive suffixes is often a disparaging tactic. For instance, add-illo to a respected lawyer, abogado, and you have an ignorant one, un abogadillo. The small-town mentality is derided in the use of aldeanismo, an aldea being a ‘small village.’

And there is a whole array of American barrio slang to tickle one’s fancy. For example, La chata is an affectionate slang term meaning ‘funny face,’ ‘honey,’ or ‘cutie,’ but in Central America or Spain a fellow would probably be punched out if he were to call his girl a ‘bedpan’ or ‘barge’!

The animal world figures prominently in many Spanish idioms. If you want to be the life of the party, it is necessary ser el pato de la boda ‘to be the wedding duck.’ There is Que mosca te ha picado? ‘What fly has bitten you?: What is eating you?’ El gusano de la conciencia is ‘the worm of the conscience,’ remorse. ‘To play the red owl’ (tocar el mochelo) is to get the worst end of something.

Aquí hay gato encerrado ‘There is a locked-up cat here’=‘I smell a rat,’ meter gato por liebre ‘to put a cat in the place of a hare’=‘to be taken in,’ and buscar tres pies al gato ‘to look for three feet on the cat’=‘to look for trouble’ are three feline phrases.

Spanish cursing and swearing is inventive— echar sapos y culebras literally, means ‘to throw out frogs and snakes.’ Such behaviour usually ends up with having to pay the piper, that is, pagar los platos rotos ‘to pay for the broken plates.’

Lest we forget, the “class” way to play hooky is hacer vaca, ‘to make a cow.’

Picture una boca de agua ‘a water mouth’=‘a fire hydrant,’ A person with a closed head ('cerrado de cabeza') is certainly narrow-minded. The title VERBATIM could well be translated as Al Pie de la Letra ‘to the foot of the letter’=‘word for word’!

Avoid una media cuchara ‘a half spoon,’ for he is a mediocre person indeed. ‘Give a pumpkin’ dar calabazas if you want to turn down an unsuitable suitor. Making decisions sometimes requires ‘sleeping on it,’ that is, ‘conferring with one’s pillow,’ consultar con la almohada. Speaking of sleeping, in Spanish sleeping soundly is ‘to sleep like a loose leg’ dormir a pierna suelta.

You will be, likely to jump for joy (dar zapatetas ‘to give shoe sole slaps’) and go on a spree (echar una cana al aire ‘to toss gray hair into the air’) if you can go shopping ‘every other day’ un día sí y un día no at your ‘rich aunt’s.’ i.e. tía rica ([Am. Spanish] ‘rich aunt’=‘pawn shop’). That is, unless one canta alto ‘sings high’=‘asks too much.’

Many phrases slip over the tongue like liquid velvet. There is a tontas y a locas ‘stupidly and crazily’=‘helter-skelter’ and the similar a troche y moche (or trochemoche), meaning ‘in complete confusion.’ Or sin ton no son ‘without tone or sound’=‘without rhyme or reason.’ Un runrún is ‘a rumor.’ A popular alcoholic beverage, chicha, figures in the saying, Ne chicha ni limonada ‘neither fish nor fowl.’ ‘Look high and low’ andar de la Ceca a la Meca and ‘in every nook and cranny’ de cabo a rabo=‘from tip to tail.’ Show your ‘guts’, which in Spanish is el hígado=‘the liver.’ To give una dedada de miel ‘a pinch of honey,’ or dar jabón (or enjabonar) literally ‘to give soap’ or ‘to wash with soap’ you can flatter someone or ‘soft-soap’ him.

If your word is no good, you ‘paint someone a violin’ pintarle un violín. Empty, idle words are ‘white words’ las palabras blancas; I could just be ‘pulling your leg’ tomar el pelo, literally, ‘to take the hair.’

I can remember being greatly embarrassed once when I was trying to explain in Spanish about my being embarrassed, and how shocked my high school amigos were when I announced, they thought, that I was pregnant (embarazada). Incidentally, the last time we were in Guatemala we often heard the beautiful expression for ‘being pregnant,’ tener gracia ‘to have grace’ or ‘to be blessed.’

My uncle recalled a time when in a Mexican restaurant he and his family had waited an overly long time for their order. He was astonished when his cry for service, “Servesa!” brought beer instead. Servesa certainly seemed a reasonable Spanish way of saying, “I want service!” but “Cervesa!” will bring a brew every time.

Friends die laughing—that is, they laugh a mandíbula batiente ‘with their lower jaw beating’— when we tell them of’ the pleasures of living a short distance out of town. The Spanish speaker would say we live en los quintos infiernos ‘in the fifth hell.’ And Cuban friends would say we live donde el diablo dió los tres gritos ‘where the devil gave three hoots’ or simply, ‘You live in the sticks’ “Vive en las quimbambas!”

Well, ‘inside of a little’ dentro de poco, actually, ‘of a slap’ de sopentón, I mean, ‘in less than what sings a rooster’ en menos de lo que un gallo, here it is time to stop. It would be such fun to discuss other things, but eso es harina de otro costal ‘That is flour from another sack!’

A Wisconsin Supreme Court Dictionary

Jack Stark, Madison, Wisconsin

To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings.

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War

When the Wisconsin Supreme Court writes an opinion in which it does not interpret a statute, words have their usual meanings. However, when the court does interpret a statute, that change of events causes words to change their meanings. Therefore, writing a complete Wisconsin Supreme Court dictionary would be a useful, but daunting, project. The following entries are only part of such a dictionary, based on the court’s statutory interpretation cases during the five-year period beginning in 1985.

after After or before (Sheely v. DHSS, 150 Wis. 2d (1989)).

any mortgage Any mortgage except one for future advances (Colonial Bank v. Marine Bank, N.A., 152 Wis. 2d 444 (1989)).

any other The same but under extraordinary circumstances (State ex rel. M.L.B. v. D.G.H., 122 Wis. 2d 536 (1985)).

any party Any party that has not presented its views (Carkel, Inc. v. Lincoln Cir. Ct., 141 Wis. 2d 257 (1987)).

are May be (Burlington Northern v. Superior, 131 Wis. 2d 564 (1986)).

comply Agree to (Ziegler Co., Inc. v. Rexnord, 147 Wis. 2d 308 (1988)).

continuing financial interest Continuing financial interest and interdependence (Ziegler Co., Inc. v. Rexnord, Inc. 139 Wis. 2d 593 (1987)).

custody Building (State v. Sugden, 143 Wis. 2d 728 (1988)).

dam Dam except a cranberry dam (Tenpas v. DNR, 148 Wis. 2d 579 (1989)).

defendant Possible defendant (Richards v. Young, 150 Wis. 2d 549 (1989)).

destitute Having someone who has a duty to support one and who could provide for one’s needs (State v. Cissell, 127 Wis. 2d 205 (1985)).

entered Said to be entered (Matter of Estate of Ristow, 144 Wis. 2d 421 (1988)).

equally In some fashion (In re Marriage of: Lutzke v. Lutzke, 122 Wis. 2d 24 (1985)).

establish Establish or modify (State ex rel. Jeske v. Jeske, 144 Wis. 2d 364 (1988)).

every witness Every adult witness (State v. Hanson, 149 Wis. 2d 474 (1989)).

evident Possible (Spooner Dist. v. N.W. Educators, 136 Wis. 2d 263 (1987)).

exclusive One of several (Henning v. General Motors Assembly, 143 Wis. 2d 1 (1988)).

express Implied (Local Union No. 487 v. Eau Claire, 147 Wis. 2d 519 (1989)).

extraneous Extraneous or personal (State V. Stewart, 143 Wis. 2d 28 (1988)).

injury Notice of future harm (Les Moise, Inc. v. Rossignol Ski Co., Inc., 122 Wis. 2d 51 (1985)).

judgement Judgement except a divorse judgement (Parrish v. Kenosha County Circuit Ct., 148 Wis. 2d 700 (1989)).

may Shall in the case of disinterested attorneys (In Matter of Estate of Trotalli, 123 Wis. 2d 340 (1985)).

no suit No suit except a contract suit (Energy Complexes v. Eau Claire County, 152 Wis. 2d 453 (1989)).

obligations undertaken Obligations undertaken separately from rent (Univest Corp. v. General Split Corp., 148 Wis. 2d 29 (1989)).

offer Seperate offer (DeMars v. LaOur, 123 Wis. 2d 366 (1985)).

order Order except a bail forfeiture order (State v. Wickstrom, 134 Wis. 2d 158 (1986)).

paid by Traceable to (Kremer Bros. v. Pulaski State Bank, 138 Wis. 2d 395 (1987)).

parents, grandparents and great-grandparents Parents, grandparents, greatgrandparents and aunts (In re Custody of D.M.M., 137 Wis. 2d 375 (1987)).

person Person or car (State v. Moretto, 144 Wis. 2d 171 (1988)).

presence Control (State v. Fry, 131 Wis. 2d 153 (1986)).

preserving order Punishing disorder (Contempt in State v. Dewerth, 139 Wis. 2d 544 (1987)).

property Property except personal injury claims (Marriage of Richardson v. Richardson, 139 Wis. 2d 778 (1987)).

property Personal property (Pulsfus Farms v. Town of Leeds, 149 Wis. 2d 797 (1989)).

prosecuted Holds office (K.L. v. Hinickle, 144 Wis. 2d 102 (1988)).

repealed Amended (In re Paternity of D.L.T., 137 Wis. 2d 57 (1987)).

shall Shall unless there is a good reason not to (Employees Local 1901 v. Brown County, 146 Wis. 2d 728 (1988)).

spouse Spouse except a murderer (Steinbarth v. Johannes, 144 Wis. 2d 159 (1988)).

substantial Substantial and protected by law (Waste Management of Wisconsin v. DNR, 144 Wis. 2d 499 (1988)).

to From (State v. Worgull, 128 Wis. 2d 1 (1986)).

wire Wire except the wire part of a cordless telephone transmission (State v. Smith, 149 Wis. 2d 89 (1989)).

with particularity Not at all (State v. Gomaz, 141 Wis. 2d 302 (1987)).

Appellate judges differ significantly from other groups that generate material for their own specialized dictionaries. One difference is that other groups need to do so because in order to function they must either attach new meanings to existing words and phrases or coin new words and pharases. Most groups go too far, partly because the obscurity of their jargon sets them apart from others, thereby increasing their prestige. For example, although computer specialists properly coined byte to represent a new concept, they could have used the everyday expression turn off instead of inventing a new meaning for take down. In contrast, in virtually all the cases I read the judge who wrote the opinion did not have to invent a new meaning for a word or phrase; the relevant statute yielded a clear meaning that would have resolved the case. The judge who wrote the opinion, however, did not necessarily like that resolution.

Judicial jargoan also differs from other jargoan in that the creators of the latter do so openly. They do not pretend that they are merely reading ordinary language as anyone else would read it. After they produce enough new meanings or newly defined terms they are likely to publish a dictionary. They expect the definitions in it to supplement, not to supplant secretly, the definitions that are in common use. Judges, however, claim merely to be interpreting words and phrases in statutes either in the same way that anyone else would or in a way that effectuates the legislature’s intent. They never acknowledge that they are in effect writing their own dictionary in order to arrive at the results they favor. Therefore, they implicitly replace existing definitions, and, because in the future judges will accept as precedents the cases in which they do so, they truly do change the meanings of words and phrases.

The most important difference between nonjudicial and judicial dictionary making is the magnitude of the adverse consequences. People who are not judges can do little harm beyond mildly degrading the language and annoying linguistic purists. In contrast, the statutory interpretation practices of judges threaten rights and property. In fact, they even threaten freedom; in a significant number of the cases I read the invention of meaning resulted in a criminal conviction. Also, because those practices make it nearly impossible to predict the outcome of a case, persons litigate even though the plain meaning of the relevant statute is not in their favor, and their attorneys run up huge bills looking for ways to induce judges to ignore the plain meaning of statutes. Those interpretive practices thus have enormous social and financial costs. They also have institutional costs because, to the extent that they subvert clear meaning that the legislature created, they usurp legislative authority and diminish the separation of powers, one of the bedrocks of our system of government.

Despite these practices, judges are not evil persons. They are operating as judges have operated for a long time. They also reflect their legal education. If law schools recognized the importance of statutory law and advocated interpreting statutes only so as to reveal their plain meanings, they would have even less material to teach. Judges—who, in one sense, are merely lawyers in robes—when they are on the bench also continue the lawyerly practice of begining with a desired result and then working backwards to arguments that perhaps support it. Nevertheless, clandestine judicial dictionary making, in addition to its serious social and political consequences, has deleterious linguistic consequences. The first step in preventing those consequences is to realize that in courts words are losing their meanings.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“(The cyclist) hopes to survive the 2,020-mile race through the French countryside and mountains to ride down Paris’ eloquent avenue, Champs Elysées.” [From the Los Angeles Times, 4 July 1988. Submitted by John Paul Arnerich, Los Angeles.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“… You have to see West Side Story in performance, preferably on stage, to fully appreciate the enormity of Bernstein’s achievement.” [From “Saturday’s Television and Radio,” Peter Davalle, The Times, 27 October 90:24]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Wandering around the transformed city of Bergen, Norway in search of old haunts, I felt like Gulliver waking from a long sleep.” [From “Going Home to/Retour á Bergen,” by Helga Loverseed, in Empress (C.P. Airlines magazine), May-June 1986:52. Submitted by Mrs. G.H. Montgomery, Westmount, Quebec.]

A Menagerie of Words

Don Sharp, Springfield, Missouri

Metaphor, the literary process that makes a direct comparison of one thing to another, has a dual personality in word formation. Its facilitating role is to create a new word from an existing one owing to some similarity in their referents. Thus, kite was aptly made from Old English cáta ‘hawk,’ since a kit hovers in the air in the manner of a hawk.

With the passing of time, however, metaphor also has a debilitating effect. Only an etymologist today would be expected to know of the kite/hawk kinship, and only he is able to see a kite in a spring sky and appreciate it as the hawk it once was.

Since animals are so common, they are often used in metaphorically formed words. Some animals are named from a comparison to another animal. Aardvark was borrowed from Afrikaans aard ‘earth’ plus vark ‘pig,’ the similarity being the snouts. Alligator is from Spanish el lagarto ‘the lizard,’ since the general configuration of both reptiles is horizontal. Chameleon originated as Greek chamaí' on the ground' plus léoacute;n,' ‘lion,’ from the shape of the animal’s manelike head. Hippopotamus, from Greek, is a ‘horse that swims in a river.’ Porcupine, from Latin, is a ‘pig with thorns.’

The metaphor in canary is senseless, though, because the word is actually a misnomer. The French canarie designated the principal isle of the groups of islands. The word had come through Spanish Canaria, originating as Latin Canāria Insula ‘Isle of the Dogs.’ Early explorers on the islands found great numbers of large dogs there and named the archipelago after them, from the Latin canis ‘dog.’ Later, there came to be a demand for the birds as pets. They were called canaries, and the dogs were soon forgotten.

Original animal metaphors are all but obliterated in words that have no reference to animals. An asinine, human action is the one only an ass should commit, since ass ‘animal known for its stupidity’ is based on Latin asinus ‘ass.’ To play a bugle is to blow on the horn of a wild ox, through Old French bugle, from Latin bōs ‘ox.’ Butter hides the Greek boûs ‘ox’ plus t\?\rós ‘cheese.’ A canard is a false story fabricated to deceive. The lost metaphor in canard is a duck, from a French expression vendre un canard á moitié ‘to half-sell a duck.’ To half-sell anything is not to sell it at all, but to make it seem as if it had been sold, that is, ‘to deceive.’

From Greek kónōps ‘mosquito’ the Romans formed conopium ‘couch with a net’ (to keep mosquitoes away). The canopy used as an elegant covering over a modern bed, then, is a metaphoric net to keep the lowly mosquito at a distance. The ultimate origin of the word is an Egyptian town Canopus, evidently well known for the notorious insect. Caper is from Italian capriolo ‘male roe deer.’ One who capers around is likened to leaping like a deer. A cavalier is tied to his steed through Latin caballus ‘horse.’ Chenille was so called from its comparison to a hairy caterpillar, from the fabric’s hairy texture. The ultimate origin of the word is Latin canis ‘dog.’ The forgotten animal in columbine is a dove, from Latin columba. The flower of the plant resembles a cluster of five doves. The original cynics were Greek philosophers who made fun of wealth. Their name came from kýōn, a Greek word meaning ‘dog.’ Most cynics actually lived barely better than dogs.

The animal completing the metaphor in dandelion is a lion. It was the French who established the comparison in dent de lion ‘tooth of a lion,’ from the tooth-shaped leaves of the plant. Easel was borrowed from Dutch ezel ‘ass.’ The artist’s easel supports his canvas in the manner an ass carries a traveler’s belongings on his back. Gossamer is a collection of weblike material seen floating through the air in autumn. Gossamer was formed from early English gōs ‘goose’ plus summer ‘summer.’ The reference is either to the similiarity of drifting goose feathers or to the time of year when geese begin to migrate. Latin mūs ‘mouse’ is the origin of muscle The association is due to some muscles' shapes being similar to that of a mouse. Also, the movement of a flexed muscle was thought to resemble the creeping of a mouse.

The animal in hiding in pavilion is a butterfly, from Latin papilionem ‘butterfly.’ Early pavilions were tents, which were shaped like the spread wings of the butterfly. Today’s doctors' pavilion is far removed from a tent. Pedigree completes its metaphor with the Old French pied de grue ‘crane’s foot,’ the three-branched print of the foot of a crane being similar to the lines showing ancestry on a genealogical chart. Porcelain was borrowed from Italian porcelaine ‘cowrie shell,’ from a similarity of the surfaces of each. The origin of the word, however, is Latin porcus ‘pig,’ since the curve of the shell resembles the curve of a pig’s body.

Ukulele, from Hawaiian, is a metaphor from ‘uku ‘flea’ plus lele ‘to jump.’ Since ukuleles often provide music for dancing, the association might be from the dancers’ flea-like movements, or there could be a connection with Edward Purvis, a British military officer who popularized the instrument in Hawaii.

Metaphor, as can be seen in this menagerie of words, is ironic in that it is a great help in the creation of a word, but in a certain sense, it is also an accomplice in its death.

EPISTOLA {Shannon M. Diotaiuti}

Dear Sir:

Having lived in Italy for some time, I believe I may be able to answer Barbara Bassett’s letter regarding the color of Italian eggs [XVIII, 1]. She wondered why an art expert in the Sistine Chapel said that Michelangelo had used the red (rosso) of an egg in his preparation for the frescoes. Italians use almost exclusively brown-shelled eggs. These eggs are harder shelled and the yolk is really quite red or reddish-orange. American eggs look quite anemic next to Italian eggs. Another word for yolk is tuorlo, but rosso is more accurate if you want to describe the color.

Speaking of eggs, why do we English speakers talk of the egg white when it is really clear until it is cooked or beaten? In Italian the albumen is albume or chiaro (‘clear’).

[Shannon M. Diotaiuti, Saratoga, California]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Rachel Perry cosmetics offer a natural alternative to skin care.” [Subheadline of article in The Tab, Newton, Massachusetts, which prints in its masthead, “The number beside each person’s name is their extension.” Submitted by Alice Batchelor, Wellesley]

Wine Vocabulary and Wine Description

Adrienne Lehrer, The University of Arizona (Tucson)

Drinking wine can be a lot of fun, and talking about the taste and aroma of the wine while drinking it can make it even more fun. My scientific interest in wine description grew out of watching people, mostly men, hold a glass of wine up to a candle, swish it around, sniff it, taste it, and utter some wonderfully poetic-sounding remark, such as, “The burnt fruity nose a bit overpowers the buttery lushness of the finish.” I was certainly impressed by the language, and I wondered first, what these words meant, and second, if I, too, could learn to talk that way.

The first part of my study involved collecting and analyzing those descriptions used by wine writers and enologists to characterize wines. Although the vocabulary can be indefinitely expanded, I collected about 200 words that I found to be commonly used. (A list of the commonest appears at the end.)

Some of these terms are straightforwardly descriptive, such as sweet, dry, or woody; but much of the vocabulary combined both a descriptive and an evaluative element. If we consider body, for example, which corresponds to the amount of alcohol and dissolved solids in the wine, we find neutral words like light and heavy, but more evaluatively loaded words, like thin or coarse, meaning ‘too light’ or ‘too heavy’ respectively. Some of the wine descriptors are purely—or at least mostly—evaluative, such as great, noble, and elegant, or hollow and bland.

Especially interesting are the descriptors that are taken over from very different semantic domains, such as words that describe personality and character: aggressive, charming, diffident, honest, feminine, masculine. How can these descriptions be meaningful? In order to understand how a wine can taste feminine or aggressive, we rely on intralinguistic associations. Since feminine is semantically related to words like sweet, perfumed, light, and delicate, which can be related to the smell, taste, and “feel” of wines in the mouth, we can understand how a wine might be described as feminine.

The next phase of my study was designed to determine how descriptive language is applied to wines. Three groups of wine drinkers served as subjects for a variety of experiments.

The first group consisted of nonexperts from different parts of the United States who had never drunk or discussed wine with each other. At each of the five sessions, subjects were given three perceptibly different red wines or three different white wines, typically from different countries and from different varietals (wines made primarily from a single grape variety), and subjects were asked to describe each of the wines. Though subjects sometimes protested that they did not know any wine terms, once they got going they often wrote lengthy descriptions. As a related task I gave them a list of 145 wine descriptors, collected from the first phase of my study, and asked them to circle all the words they considered appropriate for each wine. Results showed not only that the descriptions were different, but that they were inconsistent. One particular wine was described as “sweet, a bubbly, flowery, light fizzy feeling in the mouth” by one subject, “quite dry, quite tangy” by another, and “harsh odor, pungent, unpleasant, bitter, sharp” by a third.

Two observations on the vocabulary may explain part of the problem. First, because people prefer some wines to others and because many of the words are value-laden, subjects who like a wine used terms to describe it that differed from the words of those who did not like it: a subject who liked a light wine would not select a negative term like thin. Second, most of the terms involve a reference to some implicit scale: wines may be termed light or heavy, sweet or dry with respect to all other wines, to wines of that class (red or white), or to wines of that varietal. Each subject was making an implicit comparison, but the reference was never made explicit. Furthermore, people who are used to relatively heavy wines, Chianti, for example, might find Beaujolais light, whereas people used to light wines, such as Austrian reds, might judge that same Beaujolais to be heavy.

Another set of experiments used a matching paradigm. A pair of subjects was given the same three perceptibly different wines. One subject had to describe and differentiate them so that his partner could identify them on the basis of the descriptions. Overall, the success level for correct matches was no better than chance.

Subjects in the second group, also nonexperts, met every two weeks over a period of eight months to taste and talk about wine. Tasks similar to those previously described were performed, but the goal with this group was to see whether they would develop a consensual vocabulary and come to understand what the others meant by the words they used. Records on consensus were taken at the beginning and end of the eight-month study. Subjects did not do much better on the matching task at the end than at the beginning, showing that no group consensus emerged; yet they reported that they felt subjectively that they communicated better. They learned which of the others shared their own preferences and whose judgement they could trust. Moreover, the words they used changed with experience: when it became clear that earthy was used in very different ways by different people, its use dropped significantly.

The third group consisted of wine scientists— graduate students and winery staff at the University of California at Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology. Among this group there was greater agreement in wine descriptors—but only with California wines, that is, those wines with which the subjects had the most experience. On the wines from Portugal, Australia, or France, their agreement was no better than that of the nonexperts. This shows that training and experience contribute to consensual use of language but do not automatically generalize to the descriptions of unfamiliar wines. The reason is that experts first identify the wine and then judge it according to the relevant norms for that type: if the wine is unfamiliar, they lack the relevant standards for judging.

If the use of language by most people who describe wine is so subjective and idiosyncratic, should they drink silently? Not necessarily. Much of the time people describe wines as they are drinking them, and there is no need to pick out a particular wine. Talking about a wine, I believe, enhances the experience by allowing one wine drinker to point out characteristics that another might miss. Suppose that one person says something like, “Can you taste that chalkiness on the back of the tongue?” This directs the other tasters to notice something they might not have observed. It would not necessarily matter if wine experts or wine scientists would deny that the wine had any chalkiness and that what was noticed was something completely different. Much of our conversation, especially in informal settings, is not so much to provide information about the external world as to form social bonds. Communicating about a personal experience, for example, how a wine tastes, is such an activity. And if a wine-tasting experience can be enhanced as a results of a description, it does not matter whether or not that description is either conventional or accurate. When it is necessary to be precise and construct a publicly shared language with clear referents, people can do so. Wine scientists, for example, are seriously concerned with such goals and have addressed the problem, even if they have not yet completely solved it.

In between are the wine writers who want to communicate about their experiences and preferences and make good recommendations. I suggest that readers try a few recommended wines to see if their tastes and word use are in accord with those of a particular writer. If so, they can continue to trust those judgments; if not, they should follow another’s recommendations.

For those who would like a list of the wine descriptors, following are the more common terms used with subjects in the experiments.

acidic
aged
alcoholic
aromatic
astringent
austere
baked
balanced
big
bitter
bland
bouquet
chalky
character
clean
cloying
common
complex
corky
creamy
crisp
deep
delicate
developed
disciplined
dry
earthy
elegant
empty
evolved
fat
feminine
fierce
fiery
fine
finesse
firm
flabby
flat
flowery
forceful
foxy
fragile
fragrant
fresh
fruity
full-bodied
gassy
gay
gentle
graceful
grapy
hard
harmonious
harsh
hearty
heavy
honest
hot
insipid
light
little
lively
maderized
manly
mature
meager
mealy
medium
mellow
metallic
mineral
moldy
mossy
musky
noble
nutty
oaky
odd
off
old
ordinary
overripe
peppery
perfumed
positive
powerful
prickly
pungent
racy
rare
refreshing
rich
ripe
robust
rough
round
rugged
salty
sappy
savory
scented
semisweet
sensuous
sharp
simple
small
smoky
smooth
soft
solid
sound
sour
spicy
steely
stiff
stony
strong
sturdy
stylish
succulent
sugary
supple
sweet
syrupy
tangy
tannic
tart
tender
thin
unbalanced
unharmonious
unripe
velvety
vigorous
watery
weak
wild
withered
woody
young
zestful

Colonial American English—Supplement

Richard M. Lederer, Jr., Scarsdale, New York

[As many VERBATIM readers have had the pleasure of discovering, Colonial American English, by Richard M. Lederer, Jr. (VERBATIM, 1985), contains a fascinating collection of words and phrases characteristic of the English used in the Colonies (and later) during the period from 1608 till 1783. Mr. Lederer’s unflagging interest in early American culture, his voracious reading of the books, papers, and documents of the time, and his penchant for collecting Americanisms and turning some useful, entertaining, and interesting comments about them have continued unabated. The following consists of two lists, the first a supplementary glossary to that published in Colonial American English; the second a list of words and phrases he has uncovered but which, owing to lack of context or paraphrase, he has been unable to define. Help and comments are welcome. All correspondence will be passed on to Mr. Lederer; as befits the material received, we may hijack some for our EPISTOLAE columns.

Colonial American English is available through bookstores at $24.95 or directly from VERBATIM at $24.95 (postpaid) or, for subscribers, at $20.00 (postpaid). —Editor.]

alamode (v.) Beef larded and stewed or braised with spices and vegetables. Amelia Simmons' American Cookery in 1796 had a recipe “To alamode a round of Beef.”

Anoquodor (adj.) Abbreviation for anno quo domini. Town records for Mamaroneck, N.Y., report that something was “All done April ye 2nd 1698 Anoquodor.”

attainder (n.) The legal consequence of judgment of death or outlawry pronounced in respect to treason or felony. Thomas Jones' History of New York during The Revolutionary War states that “The Act of Attainder… was passed on the 22nd of October 1779.”

bantling (n.) An infant, from bandling, a child in swaddling clothes. Jones asserted that “The peace was the bantling of Lord Rockingham…”

barrack (n.) Four poles with a movable roof to protect hay. The Commissioners laid out the Albany Post Road “across Robert Williams clear Land on the West Side where his Barrak now stands.”

bilge (n.) A variant of bulge. Simmon’s American Cookery tells us, “Eggs put them into water, if they lye on their bilge, they are good and fresh.”

bomb (n.) A small warship equipped with mortars for throwing bombs. Jones described: “[T]he fleet arrived. It consisted of two 50 gun ships, 4 frigates of 28 guns, one of 20, an armed vessel of 22, a sloop of war, an armed schooner and a bomb.”

burletta (n.) An Italian diminutive of burla, a ‘mockery,’ a ‘musical farce.’ Jones wrote “The particulars of this burletta are contained in the following letter from an officer on the spot, to his friend in England dated at Philadelphia, the 20th of May 1778.”

buttermilk (n.) Butterfly milkweed or pleurisy root, a diaphoretic or expectorant. Charles Wolley in A Two Year Journal of New York 1678-1680 recorded that “Both Indians and Dutch… very often picked buttermilk.”

caress (v.) To treat with fondness, affection or kindness. Jones, referring to Sir William Johnson, commented, “He was loved, caressed, and almost adored by the Indians.”

cattle (n.) All livestock including horses, not limited to cows. A 1797 New York State law provided “That all freeholders… shall be assessed to work on the public roads… with such implements, carriages, cattle and sleds.”

cibola (n.) From Zuñi, ‘buffalo.’ E.B. O’Callaghan records a license to Sieur de la Salle: “We have granted, as a privilege, the trade in cibola skins.”

Crown Soap Soap stamped with a crown as a sign of quality. In a 1757 letter Benjamin Franklin wrote, “I am glad Peter is acquainted with the Crown Soap business.”

dogger (n.) A Dutch fishing vessel used in the cod and herring fisheries.

d. vi m. The sixth, vi, month, m., (August) of the Julian calendar. Cotton Mather’s diary for August 1721 has an entry that starts, “d. vi m. Friday.”

elisor (n.) A sheriff’s substitute in performing the duty of returning a jury, used when the sheriff is interested in the suit. In 1764 The Supreme Court of Judicature in New York City recorded that “Jacobus Bleeker, Esq. of New Rochelle and Jonathan Brown, Gent. of Rye were appointed elisors to return a jury.”

emptins (n.) Collloquial shortening of emptyings, a preparation of yeast from the lees of beer, cider, etc., for leavening. Simmons American Cookery tells us to use “a quart of emptins” when making plain cake.

enlarge (v.) To set at large, to set free. Jones reported that “Gouveneur and Seton were enlarged [from the Tower of London] without either bail or mainprize.”

fanfaron (n.) A bully, a swaggerer, an empty boaster. From Italian fanfarone a ‘boaster.’ Jones quotes Walpole as saying, “The French have tied up the hands of an excellent fanfaron, a Major Washington, whom they took and engaged to serve for a year.”

flock bed A bed stuffed with locks of wool or hair. A 1648 inventory of the estate of William Southmead of Gloucester, Mass. included “one flock bedd and pillers.”

Fuyck (n.) A fish trap, a fyke. O’Callaghan records this as the first name for Albany, N.Y.

garble (v.) To sort out parts of for a purpose, especially a sinister purpose. A March 1700 document states, “After the dissolution of this Assembly His Lordship [Bellomont]… garbled the Council.”

gurnet (n.) The sandbar protecting Plymouth, Mass., harbor, named for its resemblance to a fish, the gurnet. In 1776 The Massachusetts House of Representatives appropriated money for “repair to the gurnet at the entrance to Plymouth harbor.” In 1630 John Winthrop was “in a shallop to Plymouth… and about the Gurnet’s nose the wind blew.”

halbert (n.) A variant of halberd, the military weapon. Jones reported, “and sentenced to receive 300 lashes at the halberts, from the drummers of the army.” The culprit was apparently tied to the poles.

Hannah Hill Sea bass. A recipe in American Cookery reads, “Every species generally of salt water Fish, are best fresh from the water, tho' the Hannah Hill, Black Fish…”

hobby horse A hobby, a chosen occupation, alluding to the riding of a toy horse. Jones referring to Isaac Sears, said, “His tune is for mobbing; committees and popular meetings are his delight, his greatest pleasure, his hobby-horse.”

Independent (n.) A member of an independent church; a Congregationalist. Jones stated, “These letters were said to have come from Quaker congregations, and were written in their style; from Presbyterian Meetings, from Congregationalists, from Anabaptists, Moravians, Seceders, Independents and Separatists.”

Italian method of bookkeeping Double-entry bookkeeping, originated in 1494 by Luca Pacioli in Italy. An advertisement in Rivington’s New York Gazette on October 6, 1774, “wanted a young man acquainted with keeping books in the Italian method,” and another was from one who, “wants a place… understands Italian bookkeeping.” Perhaps they got together.

leveler (n.) One who tries to bring men to a common level or who disregards differences of rank or station. In 1745 Governor Clinton wrote to the Board of Trade, “That as they [the New York Assembly] are jealous of the power of the Crown, and are Levellers by principle, nothing but an independent Govr. could bring them to a joint sence of their duty.”

Lex Talionis The law of retaliation, providing that the punishment should be in the same kind as the crime: an eye for an eye. Jones wrote, “The Lex Talionis, in all civil wars is, perhaps, though cruel, yet legal, and upon many occasion, perfectly justifiable.”

mango (n.) A small, green, pickled musk melon. Simmons' American Cookery included a recipe “to pickle or make Mangoes of Melons.”

mischianza (n.) A medley, a performance with many different parts. From the Italian, a ‘mixture.’ Charles Stedman’s History of the American War described, “It is to the famous Mischianza that we allude, or festival given in honor of sir William Howe, by some of the British officers at Philadelphia, when he was about to give up his command to return to England.”

peperage (n.) A variant of pepperidge, the black or sour gum tree. In 1774 the road commissioners for North Castle, N.Y. “then laid out a Two Rod wide road… beginning at a Certain Peperage Sapling.”

petticoat (n.) Used symbolically to represent the female sex. In 1756 Sir William Johnson wrote to the Lords of Trade, “I concluded this treaty by taking off the Petticoat, or that invidious name of Women, from the Delaware Nation which hath been imposed upon them by the Six Nations from the time they conquored them.”

polenia linen White or brown narrow cloth from High Dutchland. A 1700 bill for a shipment from New York to Holland read, “2G. polenia linnen at 15 p b.”

prebend (n.) A daily stipend or allowance. Albert Joachimi wrote to the States General in 1638, “… a Divine, who hath a good probend, and visits the houses of the aristocracy, had intruded into the chamber at Westminister where the Judges sat…”

Prince’s metal A copper-brass or copper-arsenic alloy resembling brass. O’Callaghan reported that “Prince Rupert [d. 1682] …invented the Mezzo-tinto style of engraving and the composition called the Prince’s metal.”

pupton (n.) A variant of pulpatoon, a rabbit or fowl stew like a pot pie. From Spanish pulpeton, a slice of stuffed meat. Martha Bradley’s cookbook gives a recipe.

radicate (v.) To take root, to plant firmly. Francis Lovelace in 1673 wrote to Governor Winthrop, “It will be necessary to forme a militia, for if it should miscarry they must not radicate longer.”

Scars of Venus A rash produced by secondary syphilis. In Thomas D’Urfey’s song “Great Lord Frog to Lady Mouse” appears, “Then altho my Bum be bare,/All must own ‘tis smooth and fair;/I’ve no Scars of Venus there.”

schism shop A place of worship other than a Church of England church. The Schism Act, passed in 1714 and repealed in 1719, required all teachers to conform to the Anglican church. Jones wrote that Charles Lee was “so much vexed with rebellion, with Republicans and Presbyterians, that by his will he ordered his body not to be buried within three miles of a Presbyterian meeting house, conventicle, or a schism shop.”

scrub (n.) A small, mean person. Philip Ranlet recorded that in 1770 “A Philadelphian declared that ‘the New Yorkers have acted like scrubs, and deserve to be tarred and feathered.’ ”

Seceder (n.) Around 1758 a member of the Secession church. See quotation at Independent.

Separatist (n.) One separated from the Church of England. See quotation at Independent.

shambles (n.) A butcher’s stall and table where meat is displayed. Jones described “… and yet his shambles were every day as well, if not better, supplied than any other butcher in the neighbourhood.”

ship money A port tax levied in England to pay for national defense. In 1638 Mr. Joachim wrote the States General, “that a certain judge had distinctly advised that, under present circumstances, the ship money may not be levied off the inhabitants of England, without consent of Parliament.”

slipe (n.) A slice. In 1773 the road commissioners for the Town of Harrison, N.Y., laid out a road, “along said Merrits land to a Black Oak Stadel marked with a Slipe and three hacks with an axe.”

slop shop A shop where slops were sold. See C.A.E. Jones wrote that, “by these means and a share of his prizes, having acquired a small estate, he [Alexander McDougal] quitted the sea and settled in New York, where he kept what is known among sailors by the name of a ‘slop-shop.’ ”

sojourner (n.) A temporary resident. In 1695 the Colony of New York taxed “Sojourners by the head 24 sh.”

snout (v.) To cut the nostrils of a pig to weaken the snout. In 1788 the Scarsdale Town Board passed a law providing, “that if any Hogs trespass not being Ringed or Snouted and yoked that it shall be lawful to drive them to Pound.”

stage (n.) The distance on a highway between two stopping places. The New York Gazette in 1731 advertised, “The Boston & Philadelphia Posts will set out to perform their Stages once a fortnight.”

stive (v.) To crowd together, to stuff, cram. From Latin stipare ‘to crowd together.’ In American Cookery we are told, “and then pour it upon your cucumbers and stive them down for twenty four hours.”

tapper (n.) One who taps or draws liquor; specifically an innkeeper. In 1773 the New York Executive Council treated with “The Matter of Difference between ye two Tappers at Schanechtide.”

till (prep.) The forerunner of until. From Saxon tille to reach or come to the time of. The 1728 New York Governor’s Council recorded that, “the Yearly Quitrent… has been paid till the 25th of March.”

toft (n.) A cleared space. In 1728 the New York Governor’s Council recorded that, “Coll Dongan did demise… a toft of ground.”

wind fan A fan for winnowing grain. In the 1800 inventory of James Varian’s estate in Scarsdale, N.Y., his “Wind Fan” was valued at 7 pounds.

Definitions Unknown

Albany board - On August 16, 1780, Gen. Benedict Arnold, commanding West Point, wrote to Timothy Pickering, Quartermaster General, regarding materials then needed at the fort. “Ten thousand Albany Board, to least, will be wanted.”

ales master - In 1757 John Wollman, regarding slavery, wrote, “I ought not to be the scribe where wills are drawn in which some children are made ales masters over others during life.”

bed’s head - In 1711 William Byrd was a delegate to the House of Burgesses of Virginia. One evening he visited “the Governor ‘til he went to bed about 11 o’clock, then we went to Maj. Harrisons to supper again, but the Governor ordered the sentry to keep us out and in revenge about 2 o’clock in the morning we danced a g-n-t-r dance just at the bed’s head.”

breeth - Charles Wolley in A Two Year’s Journal in New York wrote, “Were I to draw their Effigies [beasts and birds] it should be after the pattern of the Ancient Britains, called Picts from painting, and Britains from a word of their own language, Breeth, Painting or Staining.”

burning coals - William Byrd recorded in his diary for 1707, “Then we went to play called burning coals at which we ran much and were very merry.”

caminute - In 1784 one I. Tiffany wrote to a storekeeper in Crompond, N.Y., “By some unaccountable mistake neglect or some other devilish affair the caminute was not left as it ought to have been at New York.”

caul - American Cookery, page 17. “Roast Mutton. If a breast let it be cauled, if a leg, stuffed or not, let it be done more gently than beef.”

Clark distemper - Justin Foote, a storekeeper in Crompond, N.Y., in 1784 wrote, “I am a little touched with the Clark distemper.”

clover mill - In a history of Emmitbury, Md., James Hellman wrote, “The Hartman mill was built by Dr. Robert Annan [1765-1827] for a clover mill afterwards converted into a grist.”

Curse John - In 1774 Philip Fithian was reminiscing in his diary about his undergraduate days at Princeton when “they often practised mischief by parading bad women and burning Curse John.” Rev. John Witherspoon was president of the college 1768-1794.

disteress - A character in Robert Mumford’s play, The Candidate, refers to “a very disteress motive.”

ferret - Jones, describing Howe’s mischianza [q.v.] wrote, “A grand regatta began the procession. In the first, was the Ferret galley with several general officers and a number of ladies.”

gropish - Boston merchant John Rowe’s diary for the 1760s refers to “Old fogrums only persue a gropish disposition.”

Indian Cabinet - In his London Diary, William Byrd wrote “We played at stock jobbing. For the Indian Cabinet I gave B.B. the chance of one card and H.L. the chance of the other, but neither won.”

mole - The Boston Independent Journal in 1776 advertised “8 thousand gallons of Mole molasses.”

moschetto - In 1701 John Randolph wrote, “Mr. Archdale provided for him a moschetto engine against his master’s will to catch fish.” Moschetto is listed in the OED as a variant spelling of mosquito. One meaning of mosquito is ‘light and quick,’ as a mosquito fleet. Is this just a lightweight fish trap?

Mount - John Rowe recorded in his diary for 1760, “Clearing sugar from the Mount… They are all called in from molesting the Mount Trade.”

nihil account - In 1776 William Eddis was a customs collector paid by the British government and his loyalty was suspect by the local Committee of Observation. He wrote to them, “We are not entitled to our salaries without a nihil account transmitted quarterly for our proceedings.”

Norris’s Drops - On November 22, 1772, George Washington bought “two bottles of Norris’s Drops for Miss Custis.” Norris’s Antimonial Drops were widely advertised in Virginia newspapers, but their content is unknown.

pluck money - N.Y. Executive Council Minutes 12/5/1670: “Upon mature Consideracon had hereupon, Mr. Sharp having confest his Error, It was Ordered, that hee pay back to Mr. Nicholas Bayard all the Pluck-Money delivered out at the Sale.”

Priory sheep - Mr. H.H. Gardner wrote in a 1775 letter, “I have often wished for a good flock of Priory sheep.”

set her up - William Byrd, in his London Diary recorded, “After dinner we gave a girl half a Guinea each to set her up.” I can guess what they did, but cannot find confirmation.

single stockings - John Harrower recorded in his diary, “I think no more of seeing forty or fifty Nigers every day than I did of seeing so many dabling wives at Johnsmiss with single stockings.” The OED defines them as stockings of one thickness, unlined. All citations are 1552 or earlier. Why would Harrower be concerned with the thickness of stockings?

spark - John Rowe recorded in his diary, “I hope that spark may yet in some part… be obliged to do me justice.”

spunge - American Cookery, p. 38: “RUSK - To make… One pint milk, 1 pint emptins, to be laid over night in Spunge.”

stock jobbing - See Indian Cabinet, above.

trustings - A Connecticut law of 1676 regulating the cost of provisions provided, “Trustings and trifles under a shilling being left to each man’s agreement.”

turf boat - O’Callaghan, Vol I, pg 532, foot note: “Adriaen van der Donck, a free citizen of Breda… a descendant of Adriaen van Bergen, part owner of the famous turf boat in which a party of Dutch troops were clandestinely introduced in the year 1599 into the castle of that city.”

wait - A 1730 deed from Thomas Hadden of Scarsdale, N.Y. “to John ffisher a certain small wait or parcel of Land lying and being situate in the Mannor of ScarsDale aforesaid.”

whip over the ground - A character in Robert Mumford’s 1770 play, The Candidate, observed, “You are determined to whip over the ground.”

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Dictionary of English Personal Names

A.I. Rybakin, (Second Improved and Enlarged Edition, Russky Yazyk Publishers, 1989), 222pp.

When it comes to teaching materials for their English students, the Russians are nothing if not thorough. Here now, amid the standard course-books and grammars, is a specialist dictionary of English personal names, or as we would probably prefer to call them, first names. The modest paperback can be regarded as a complementary volume to the author’s earlier work, A Dictionary of English Surnames, published in 1986. It contains some 4,000 first names, and as well as the main body of the dictionary has a brief preface, a short section on the history of English first names, a bibliography, and a separate listing of some 1,000 derivatives or pet names, with cross references to their full form.

Inevitably, one compares the main entries with those in similar recent works, such as Leslie Dunkling and William Gosling’s Everyman’s Dictionary of First Names (1983) and Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges’ A Dictionary of First Names (1990). The content and treatment fall somewhere between the two, although the style is noticeably more succinct and less discursive. Where Rybakin scores over the other two works is in the provision of pronunciations and, for a main or source name, a selection of literary characters who bear it. In the latter respect it differs from Dunkling and Gosling, who go more for real-life bearers, especially stage and screen celebrities, and from Hanks and Hodges, whose representation of historic bearers is rather restricted. When a name is biblical and of Hebrew origin, too, Rybakin boldly goes where few lexicographers have gone before and gives the actual Hebrew (albeit in Roman transliteration).

A typical Rybakin main name entry has seven items of information following the headword that is the name itself: pronunciation (in IPA), gender, Russian form (both traditional and modern), language(s) of origin, ultimate literal meaning, examples of literary bearers, and derivatives. Equivalents in other languages sometimes serve as an eighth item. So here he is, for example (in English translation, and with abbreviations spelled out), on Susan:

SUSAN [‘su:zn], feminine, Suzan, earlier Suzan, from French Susanne, Suzanne, from Late Latin Susanna, from Greek Sousanna, from Hebrew shūshannāh, ‘lily’, see SUSANNA, SUSANNAH. SUSAN IS CHARACTER IN THOMAS HEYWOOD’S PLAY A Woman Killed with Kindness (1607). Susan Pearson is character in Charlotte Bront&euml’s novel Shirley (1849). Derivatives: SUE, SUEY, SUKE, SUKEY, SUKIE, SUKY, SUSIE, SUSY, SUZY.

An entry like this has its good and bad points. It is good to have the name traced back through the different languages to its Hebrew original; but the inclusion of just two literary Susans (out of what must be hundreds) tells us little, except perhaps that the name was already in general English use in the early 17th century. (As their role models Dunkling and Gosling prefer the popular actresses Susan Hayward, Susan Hampshire, and Susan Strasberg, while Hanks and Hodges instance no individual Susan at all, literary or otherwise.)

Rybakin’s range of names is comprehensive. As well as all the expected first names, old and new, that appear in dictionaries of this type, he includes names that are more familiar from the Bible and literature than everyday life, so that his letter G, for instance, takes in Galahad and Ganymede and his letter P Pliny and Psyche, none of which appears in the other two books. But even if almost no one is now (or ever) called by these names, it is excellent to have a book that gives their origins, if only for purely academic interest.

Rybakin’s etymologies are mostly quite sound and accord with current scholarship. However, he proposes a source in Latin ancillus, ‘servant’ for Lancelot, which like most names in the Arthurian cycle is almost certainly of Celtic origin. He also offers the hoary old ‘bitterness’ or ‘rebelliousness’ for Mary, whereas it is now thought that the name derives from the Hebrew root element MRH meaning literally ‘to be plump,’ so in a transferred sense ‘strong,’ ‘beautiful.’

In a bare six and a half pages Rybakin takes us on a crash course in the history of English first names, from Anglo-Saxon Æthelbeald to the titlederived names of modern times such as Duke and Earl. He rightly devotes part of his survey to a consideration of surnames as first names, although in his main entries names of this type such as Bradley, Chester, Clifford, and Seymour are simply explained as deriving ‘from the surname.’ Dunkling and Gosling and Hanks and Hodges, on the other hand, take such names back to their own origin, often in a place-name. But maybe Rybakin felt that thus far is far enough, and that for surname origins the reader is best advised to consult a different dictionary, such as his own.

Armed with both his books and, of course, a knowledge of Russian, one has a guide to English personal names that would be a useful addition to anyone’s reference shelves.

[Adrian Room, Stamford, Lincolnshire]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The Multilingual PC Directory

Ian Tresman, (Knowledge Computing Ltd.), 254pp.

[See note at end of review.]

This descriptive catalogue lists about 300 multilingual and foreign language products for IBM PCs and compatibles, “supporting as many languages, which are available in over 70 countries from over 1000 manufacturers, publishers, and affiliates.” It includes product profiles, describing the main features and noteworthy multilingual or foreign language capabilities, computer and software requirements, languages supported, any known reviews, and price information in local currency (but with currency conversion), detailed costs of shipping and technical support as well as credit card and other charges. The company profiles section gives the addresses, telephone, facsimile, and telex numbers of all manufacturers and publishers, with their international affiliates and dealers. More than thirty different types of products are described, including word processors, desktop publishing, fonts, translation packages, spelling checkers, and their applications.

In some cases, an accompanying illustration displays the alphabets available; for example, the Alaph [sic] Beth Font Kit includes Aramaic (Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, and Ninth century fonts), Assyrian/Babylonian, Coptic, Cuneiform (Ras Shamra and Ugaritic), Hieroglyphics (+850), North Semitic, Phoenician, Sabæan, and Syriac (Estrangelo, Serto, and Eastern scripts). It is described as designed to work with Multi-Lingual Scholar from Gamma Productions. Each font comes with different sizes ranging from 9 to 20 points, and styles may include normal (roman), italic, inverse, and outline. The listed price for this package is $195 for a dot matrix printer, $345 for a laser printer.

In the Language Reference section one can find, in convenient tabular form, a listing of scores of languages, where they are (or were) used, the script employed, and useful notes indicating, for example, that the “Anglo-Saxon” of “Ancient England” used the “Latin” script “plus \?\ (edh), \?\ (thorn), and æ (ash or æsc). Also shown are the ASCII, Roman-8, ECMA-94 Latin 1, and ECMA-94 Latin 2 symbol sets. There is a useful glossary of computer and typographic terms and a detailed Index with more than 10,000 entries. Other serendipitous singularities can be found, like Publishing Details, which describes the methods used in producing the book. The author/compiler, Ian Tresman, M.Sc., University of Manchester 1983, designed and copublished a utility program called WYSIWYG in 1986 and, as Technical Manager at Intex Systems (UK), was responsible for the Intext Multilingual Wordprocessor.

Tresman would appear to be among the few computer experts capable of organizing his thoughts and writing in standard English. Anyone who has fumingly, frustratedly tolerated the confusions, inaccuracies, incompletenesses, illiteracies, and genera; inabilities of manual-writers to describe the accompanying programs will be relieved and delighted to encounter the simple, straightforward presentation of information in this book, which is an essential for any individual, company, or educational institution that has occasion to deal with foreign languages and their alphabets.

Laurence Urdang

[Note: In the US, the Directory is available from Knowledge Computing, P.O.Box 3068, Stamford, CT 06902 (Fax: (203) 975-7317): $34.95 + shipping (US/UK $5; Europe $7; World $14). In the UK, it is available from Knowledge Computing, 9 Ashdown Drive, Borehamwood, Herts. WD6 4LZ/UK: £19.95 + shipping (UK £3; Europe £4; elsewhere £8). Payment may be made by credit card, banker’s draft (on US or UK bank), or international money order on a US or UK bank in US dollars or sterling.]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The Oxford Dictionary of New Words: A Popular Guide to Words in the News and Neologisms: New Words since 1960

Comp. Sara Tulloch, (Oxford University Press, 1991), xi + 322pp. and Jonathon Green, (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1991), xi + 339pp.

It is always interesting to see the publication of two competing books on the same subject appear at the same time, for the reviewer is thereby given the opportunity to “compare and/or contrast” them. These two, as can be seen from the bibliographic information above, are almost exactly the same length, and their trim sizes are identical; the typography of the ODNW is superior as is the binding, Neologisms, though higher priced, being perfectbound, like a paperback, and characterized by atrocious typography. According to the blurbs, the former contains 2000 entries, the latter 2700; but the ODNW is more densely packed with information— at least thirty per cent more, by my calculations.

“More,” as we all know, is not necessarily “better.” There is some overlapping of entries, but the books offer somewhat different kinds of coverage. In the first place, with all the new dictionaries published since 1960 and the updatings and revisions of existing works that continue to appear, both in the US and the UK, it is difficult to see why Green chose to go back to 1960 as a point of departure, unless one takes into account the publication of the Barnhart Dictionary of New English Since 1963 (1973) and its second edition (1980) and assumes that this book was intended to compete with them; certainly, Neologisms hasn’t patch on Barnhart’s books. The Oxford work, however, gives a great deal of useful information, largely, I imagine, because Oxford’s citation files are probably more extensive than Green’s. It is instructive to compare the treatment of an entry from each book:

Neologisms
high five n. [1966]
ritual palm slapping, originated by US blacks and now popular among a wide range of individuals, especially sportsmen who raise their hands and slap palms together to celebrate a victory or on-field success. ‘West Germany: Voller and Klinsman make with the high fives in Milan.’

(Independent on Sunday, 17 June 1990)

Oxford New Words

high-five noun and verb
In US slang.

noun: A celebratory gesture (originally used in basketball and baseball) in which two people slap their right hands together high over their heads; often in the phrase to lay down or slap high-fives. Hence also figuratively: celebration, jubilation.

intransitive verb: To lay down high-fives in celebration of something or as a greeting to celebrate.

Formed by compounding: a five (that is, a hand-slap; compare British slang bunch of fives for a hand or fist) that is performed high over the head.

The high-five was originally a gesture developed for use in basketball, where it first appeared among the University of Louisville team in the 1979-80 season; Louisville player Derek Smith claims to have coined the name. By 1980 it was also being used widely in baseball, especially to welcome a player to the plate after a home run (and in this respect is similar to the hugs and other celebratory gestures used by British football players). Television exposure soon made it a fashionable gesture among young people generally; what ensured its eventual importation to the UK was its adoption by the Teenage Mutant Turtles (in the form high-three, since Turtles do not have fingers) as a jubilant greeting. All that touched off a wild celebration of hugs, high-fives and champagne spraying.

USA Today 14 Oct. 1987, p. 1

A month has passed since the election and still Republicans and Democrats are high-fiving.

Maclean’s 2 Apr. 1990, p. 11

So with a flying leap and a double high-five the two teammates celebrated the start of a new season.

Sports Illustrated Dec. 1990,p. 16

The differences in length and fullness are obvious. The stated purpose of the ODNW, as set forth in the Preface, is “to provide an informative and readable guide to about two thousand high-profile words and phrases which have been in the news during the past decade.” Green, on the other hand, describes a different purpose in his Introduction, to wit:

to encompass as wide as pertinent a range of vocabulary, the sole proviso being that the word or usage has entered the language in the last thirty years…. The basic qualification for inclusion has been that the language in question has entered the mainstream.

Thus, Green cannot be faulted for offering more succinct entries, especially when the further comment in ODNW indicates a difference in purpose:

The best one can hope to do in a book of this kind is to take a snapshot of the words and senses which seem to characterize our age and which a reader in fifty or a hundred years’ time might be unable to understand fully (even if these words were entered in standard dictionaries) without a more expansive explanation of their social, political, or cultural context.

While neither editor deserves high fives for lucid exposition, the message is that different targets were being aimed at, and, unless one wishes to have both books, the choice between them may be thought to remain an open one. Still, I am nagged by inadequacies in Green’s definition of high-five, which suggests that each individual might be simply clapping his hands together, and I am bothered by the ODNW’s failure to note the date of entry into the language, saying that the earliest use of the term dates to 1979; I think that Green is right to hint at the fact that the gesture preceded its use in sport: my guess is that slap five arose among black teenagers or, perhaps, musicians as a form of greeting, approval, farewell, and the like and was later carried over into sports (perhaps, as the ODNW suggests, by Derek Smith), where it became high five. It seems unlikely that we shall ever know for sure.

One question is raised by the statement in the ODNW: Why should contemporary users need or want information expressly prepared for readers fifty or a hundred years hence? The question is, of course, specious: the book is available now, for all to see, and if one does not need or want the more replete version, the “abridged” style of Neologisms may well suffice. Personally, I like to see as much discussion of the meaning, sense development, and origin of a term as I can find, but one must sacrifice that to get a longer list of entries. Also, one will find jet set in Neologisms, because it was coined after 1960; but it is not in the ODNW because it was coined before 1980. Both list Filofax (Neologisms holding that the trade mark was registered in 1941, the ODNW says the early thirties), and, as expected, the latter includes several subentries (e.g., Filofiction, which indicates not only the productivity of Filo- as a prefix but the metaphoricity of the element) and six citations; Neologisms, in its short entry and one citation, leaves the user to derive what he can about the metaphoric uses of the word.

I have not taken the trouble to research the accuracy of the information given in these books, but I did note that grody (to the max), which is not in Neologisms, is described in the ODNW as “US teenagers’ slang”; while that might be technically correct, I have evidence that leads me to believe that it originated in the slang of Hawaiian teenagers, and while no American would dispute the nationality of Hawaiians, responsibility should be laid at the door of the real culprits.

Laurence Urdang

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary

Joyce M. Hawkins and Robert Allen, eds., (Oxford University Press, 1991), xvii + 1754pp.

Reviewing dictionaries of this kind—those similar in content and purpose to what are called “college” or “desk” dictionaries in the US—is probably quite useless in providing guidance to potential purchasers: there is always the temptation to carp at omissions, cavil at what are seen as infelicities in defining and other information, and argue one’s case against the theories that are reflected in the organization of the text. In the long run, however, dictionary reviews probably serve no function: in the face of the relatively overwhelming funds at the disposal of some publishers to promote their books, reviews fail to dissuade people from buying bad dictionaries; such a small percentage of the dictionary-buying public attend to reviews that their effect is slight even when favourable; finally, the value of a dictionary to an individual can be tested only over long use, which even the wisest reviewer cannot anticipate.

I have found many things to criticize in the OEED, some of which are matters of accuracy and consistency and inclusion, others matters of taste and preference, all of which I feel it my duty to report. It is the proper function of a reviewer to question the reason behind the publication of a book, though, in the present case I believe it to be that Oxford University Press took a long, hard look at the revenues to be realized from a dictionary that could compete, in the UK market at least, with dictionaries of similar length published by Collins, Longman, Chambers, and others. And in the UK market a price of £16.95 might make sense. In the US market, a price of $27.95 (or $29.95) for a dictionary of about the same extent as the larger college dictionaries (by Random House, Simon & Schuster, and American Heritage), which sell for about $18, makes no sense at all, especially when the subject work falls short of the competition in a number of respects.

The encyclopedic sizzle, packed into the back of the book, seems an (unfortunate) afterthought, imitative of a similarly constituted edition of the Collins English Dictionary, and quite sloppily put together at that. Many of the pages are not numbered, and a number of the callouts (labels, that is) on the illustrations are not even entered into the main text of the dictionary, to wit, number 8, fly-half, nose tackle, tight end, wide receiver, safety, linebacker, cornerback, to name a few. A note in Appendix 32 informs that “In Rugby League there are no flankers,” yet under flanker 3 the definition “a flank forward” is preceded by “(in Rugby and American Football),” flank forward is defined as “Rugby Foot-ball a wing forward,” and I was unable to find any entry for wing forward, on its own, under wing, or under forward. The difference in style make one wonder about the distinction, if any, between “(in Rugby Football)” and “Rugby Football”: the Guide in the front is of no help.

There is a color map section at the end of the dictionary. (There are no illustrations in the text.)

The “encyclopedic” character of the book, then, cannot be traced to the handful of listings and diagrams in the back matter—structure of the United Nations, genealogical table of British sovereigns, and other dull material easily found in other sources; it must lie in the text itself. Sure enough, in the entry for Rugby we find out why the football has its present oval shape (because they originally used a pig’s bladder, which, as we all know, is footballshaped).

Getting into the dictionary itself, one becomes aware that something is a foot, for there are not as many headwords as one might expect to find in other books of this size. The reason is that OUP have cleaved to their favourite structural approach to the listing of compounds, phrases, and hyphenated words by nesting them beneath the “main” word. I have never been a devotee of that approach, not on philosophical grounds but on grounds of convenience to the user. In the OUP system, chain-armour, chain bridge, chain drive, chain-gang, chain-gear, chain-letter, chain-link, chain-mail, chain reaction, chain-saw, chain-smoker, chain-stitch, chain store, chain-wale, and chain-wheel are all entered as subentries under chain.

The most naive speaker of English realizes, without going into the details of their syntactosemantic relationships, that chain-armour and chainmail do not bear the same relationship to chain as chain-gang, chain-letter, and chain-stitch, that the chain in chain reaction is different from that in chain store (not ‘a store where one buys chains’) and in chain-smoker (not ‘a person who smokes chains’), and that while chain drive and chain-saw are related because both are driven by chains, the use of chain in chain-link and chain-mail is semantically misleading, for the chief characteristic of a chain is its “one-dimensionality” while chain-link and chain-mail are, of course, two-dimensional—creating what might be considered a bent metaphor. To me the placement of chain-armour under chain strongly implies the meaning ‘armour made of parts linked together as in a chain’; but that is certainly not the case, as the definition at once makes clear. In other words, chains are characterized by sequential, linear linking, in which the parts or interlocked end to end, clearly not the case in chain-armour or chain-link (for instance). However unfortunate purists might view that fact to be, at least if the entries are listed separately, at some graphic remove from the entry for chain, their physical distance would make their semantic, metaphoric distance more understandable. If the only reason for submerging these compounds under a key word is that they share an element that has the same form, then I consider that inadequate. If there is any justification for submerging them, then it must be that there is a semantic category of chain that suggests ‘two-dimensional interlacing’ (in contrast to linear interlocking), another that suggests the notion of ‘interconnected sequence’ (which would take care of chain-smoker, chain reaction, chain-stitch, etc.), and other describable semantic reflexes.

At least the subentries under chain reflect the same form as the headword. That is not the case for alternating current, a subentry under alternate, or the array to be found under pass, which includes in passing (participle/gerund), make a pass at (noun), pass by (verb), passed pawn (adjective/past participle). This grammatical gallimaufry is not even in alphabetical order, for pass through comes before pass the time of day: is there some rule about ignoring articles that I missed? Then, thinking that we have captured them all, we find that passkey, passmark, and password are given separate headword status, presumably because they are solid. But the vagaries of spelling are such in our language (see the list at chain) that one never can tell where to look for words unless they are to be listed in some uniform fashion. Thus, the user has to come to the dictionary already aware that peace-offering and peace-pipe are hyphenated, so they are listed under peace, while peacemaker and peacetime are solid, hence are headwords: that is not very helpful if, as is most likely, the user merely wanted to discover whether the word he was seeking is spelled with a hyphen, as two words, or solid.

Do proverbs have a place in dictionaries? I question their status as lexical items but cannot argue on safe ground because they might well be categorized as part of the “encyclopedic” information. Thus, we find cast pearls before swine under pearl, beggars cannot (or must not) be choosers under beggar, and, even more curiously, know the time of day under time. I doubt that cannot or must not appear in the second proverb as frequently as can’t (I cannot recall ever having heard must not or even mustn’t); but the last expression is always preceded by not, and other representations are inaccurate.

Other unpleasant questions arise from inconsistencies:

1) Why is George Gershwin identified as being “of Russian-Jewish family” while Irving Berlin is described as “Russian-born, “and Benny Goodman and Leonard Bernstein as “American”? (There is no suggestion at their entries that Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, or Louis Armstrong were black, but, while no direct mention is made of Bessie Smith’s color, the “encyclopedic” information—in a six-line entry—yields the intelligence that “She died from injuries received in a car accident, reportedly after being refused admission to a ‘Whites only’ hospital.”)

2) Why is Ralph Vaughan Williams listed under Vaughan Williams but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle appears under Doyle?

3) Why is the dispute between the Greek government and the British Museum over the Elgin Marbles raised in a dictionary (regardless of how encyclopedic it is)?

4) What accounts for the seemingly random amount of space devoted to biographical entries?: Elgar gets 15; Elizabeth I 16; Elizabeth II 8 (quite unrevealing, though friendly and chatty).

The question of whether proper names of people and places have a rightful place in a dictionary is probably an obsolete one: their presence was formerly justified on the grounds that as “words” they are far more frequent than many of the “legitimate” words, like elytron, greave, or mithridatism. That might be justifiable if there were accurate frequency information available. That not being the case, certain names are in because the people and places are well known, some are in because they belong to categories, like presidents of the United States, world capitals, all places with a population exceeding x thousand, and so on. By frequency standards, then, Millard Fillmore, Arthur Meighen, and Eadwig, would be unlikely to make it (though I expect to hear from their respective booster clubs).

Balance is a questionable feature in this book: the information about L.S.B. Leakey’s widow and son seems a bit over the top, as does the note about his citizenship; Captain Cook gets 19 lines; the United States 21, Niels Bohr 27; Shakespeare 21, and so on. One might think, given the emphasis on encyclopedic information, that etymologies of place names would be included, but they are not. The basic problem is that the editors did not seem able to make value judgments regarding the amount of space to be devoted to the entries: on the one hand we find acid house, chaos theory, and desktop publishing, none of them succinctly written, on the other, long, strung-out entries on Steffi Graff, Margaret Atwood, and Paul McCartney, and to what avail? As a consequence of all this deadwood, we are denied useful lexicographical information, like the fact that chapter and capital are cognates.

Were I to nitpick at missing entries, I suppose I would find the kinds of omissions that amateur reviewers delight in, but I shall mention only one. On the day I picked up the OEED to review, Philip Howard’s feature, Word-Watching, in The Times [11 November 1991], used in his definition of cicisbeism the word poodle-faker, which, as near as I can make out, is an obscure or archaic Briticism, possibly military slang. Still, neither is in the OEED, though both are in Collins English Dictionary.

As might be gathered from the foregoing, I am not enamored of this book as a dictionary, though I must admit that it is different and might well set a trend in reference books. We seem to be entering a stage when many families might have in the entire house only one book that provides any clue to what is going on in the real world. I suppose that if that is the case, this one might be it.

Laurence Urdang

[US readers should be told that the spellings and pronunciations (given in IPA—International Phonetic Alphabet) are British. The spelling can be coped with by anyone with intelligence, especially as the American spellings are given, too. As no one appears to use the pronunciations anyway, they matter little.]

OBITER DICTA: Naming Names

Laurence Urdang

According to a Reuters item published in The Times [30 October 1991], four months after being found unconscious outside a bingo hall in Stockholm with “Joe Smith” engraved on his wrist bracelet, an amnesia victim is memorizing his true name, Djelassi Ali Ben Belgasam Ben Kilami.

Crossword Puzzle

Across

1. Author’s aspiration: capturing frogman’s return (4,5) 6. The sound of a clown’s debut in Shaw burlesque (5) 9. Creates fashionable slits in jackets (7) 10. Cuts 100 pages (7) 11. Kind star, for example, making a comeback (5) 12. Gets around in aunt’s folk dancing (9) 13. Asian people coveting bananas (8) 15. Free traitor held by soldiers (6) 18. Toll collecting is on the increase (6) 20. Health club covered by channel reporter’s story (8) 23. Gee—I put in fish in freighter (5,4) 24. Satisfied to poke around college (5) 25. Put a stop to hype preceding occasion (7) 26. Sin degraded elevated station (7) 27. Stuff written about one French composer (5) 28. Don’t he-men desire to keep getting healthier? (2,3,4)

Down

1. Section of lingo in government investigation (5-4)
2. Regret acquiring flat income (7)
3. Hawks stop infiltrating geese formations (5)
4. Ignore dance music nut’s reeling (8)
5. Run across the French gobbling Mexican food up (6)
6. Mixture of saltpeter missing nothing (5-4)
7. Safe place to put up pauper (4-3)
8. Copies including south parts of churches (5)
14. Staff takes in sounds of language heard in Hong Kong (9)
16. Planned school with fool from the south (9)
17. In front of magazine I run typo (8)
19. Overdose on upcoming tie breakers? (7)
21. Gadget put away after the deadline (3,4)
22. Reach around hot area of a city (6)
23. Gets by policemen, hiding last of cocaine (5)
24. Tape’s designed to stick (5)

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“8:00 PM BET FRANK’S PLACE The Chez is sued for serving a patron too many drinks after he is killed in a car accident.” [From “TV Week,” The Washington Post, 12-18 May 1991. Submitted by Anna Warner, Herndon, Virginia.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“After the jury convicted a rapist in circuit court last week, Judge Ted Coleman sentenced him to prison ‘for the rest of your natural life with credit for the 34 days already served.’ ” [From Column World, by Bob Morris, in The Orlando Sentinel, 19 November 1986. Submitted by Richard E. Langford, DeLand, Florida.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Make your homecoming a memorial one.” [From the South Dakota State College Eastern. Submitted by Jim Swanson, Madison, South Dakota.]

Crossword Puzzle Answers

Across

1. DEF(L)ECT.
5. CLAM(S U)P (US rev.).
9. A(PR)IL.
10. B(LACK)OUTS.
11. OCTUPLE (anag.).
12. F(AR E)AST.
13. SPA-RE TIRE.
15. NO-MAD (on rev.).
17. PREYS (homophone).
19. CO(DE WO)RDS (owed rev.).
22. TEMP(T)ER.
24. BAR-GAIN.
25. B(ALL)ROOMS.
26. O-VINE.
27. ELAPSES (anag.).
28. ENTREES (hidden).

Down

1. DE(A-CO.)NS.
2. FIR(ST-RAT)E (tarts rev.).
3. ECLIPSE (hidden).
4. TA(B)LE.
5. CO(ALFIE)LD.
6. ANKARAN.
7. S-CUBA.
8. POS(I)TED.
14. INCUR-IOUS.
16. MAR(GAR)INE (rag anag.).
17. PO(TAB)LE.
18. S(AT)IRES.
20. WORN-OUT (anag.).
21. SON-NETS.
23. MAL-TA (rev.).
24. BASTE (homophone).

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