VOL XXI, No 4 [Spring, 1995]
Insulting Nicknames Give Journalists Something to Be Proud of
Charles Stough, Dayton, Ohio
Raffish louts, cigar-sucking men who wear their hats indoors, chain-smoking women with voices like rusty gates, cynical muckrakers with one eye poised on the nearest keyhole, one ear on the latest whispered gossip, one nose on the nearest free lunch. In short, news people.
Or, earnest professionals fresh from college, technology freaks on the cusp between computer games and the Internet, dedicated defenders of society and protectors of truth, middle-class guardians of all that is good and nice, power freaks and culture groupies urgently seeking out the newest trend so they can play hipper-than-thou at the next person to notice it. In short, journalists.
Take your pick. But if you’re in the modern newspaper newsroom, you are more likely to encounter the latter than the former. Carpeted, air-conditioned, ergonometrically designed office decor discourages floor spitting. Computer technology discourages smoking, advances in interpersonal sensitivity discourage profanity or even loudness, enlightenment in personnel management discourages the proverbial fifth of cheap bourbon in the lower desk drawer.
From time to time, mind you, someone spills a cup of cocoa onto the keyboard of a workstation and utters something untoward. In the modern newsroom, it stands to replace the legendary shout of “Stop the presses!” But this is not to say that newspapers do not maintain refreshingly cynical traditions—if quietly. It if still dangerous to invite journalists to free lunches. And with notes of pride, those rags that have earned pejorative names in the local lore use those sobriquets in private correspondence, saloon chat, and unofficial résumés. No other profession has so rich a tradition of self-deprecation. Newspaper people have no self-respect, and they’re proud of it.
Some nicknames are promulgated by readers, of course, though for other reasons. It may be a sop for the few remaining grizzled veterans, sweating out their pensions in the corners of the world’s city rooms at papers taken over by Perrier-quaffing yuppies. Where once reputations rose and fell on the ability to jump a fence in the stormy dark, now something called a “performance review” scores their affability in committee meetings. It isn’t lost on these dinosaurs that with respectability came vast declines in newspaper readership. That, and insulting nicknames, are all that is left of the old reporters' pride.
So there is no danger that these names, no matter how vigorously opposed by newspaper marketing departments, will pass from use.
The Dayton Daily News? No, the Dayton Barely News.
Phoenix Gazette? Phoenix Guess-At-It.
Seattle Slimes (Times).
The defunct Philadelphia Journal was an attempt to bring European-styled street-paper tabloid journalism to the City of Brotherly Shove—er, Love. It did not go over and became known as the Philadelphia Urinal.
The Grauniad (Guardian: the pejorative is said to reflect something wrong with its proofreading).
The News of the Screws (News of the World).
The Indescribablyboring (Independent).
Journalism students and their campus readers are not exempt from the cynicism. Consider the University of Florida’s Independent Florida Aggravator (Alligator, the U. of F. mascot); Virginia Tech’s Dependent (Independent); the University of Illinois' Daily Illiterate (Illini); North Carolina State U.’s Tackynician (Technician); University of North Carolina’s Daily Tar Hole (Tar Heel); University of Maryland’s Dime-a-Stack (Diamondback; in fact they’re free); Southern Methodist University’s Daily Compost (Daily Post); Rice University’s Rice Thrasher (Rice Thresher); Ohio State University’s Latrine (Lantern); Baylor University’s Hilariat (Lariat); Michigan State University’s Stale News (State News); San Jose State University’s Spotted Doily (Spartan Daily); Southern Illinois U.’s Daily Erection (Egyptian); and Indiana U.’s Daily Stupid (Student).
York, Pa., supports The York Disgrace (Dispatch), The York Sunday Snooze (News), and the York Daily Wreckage (Record)…
The Aurora Be Confused (Beacon News).
The Portland Boregonian (Oregonian).
The San Jose Murky News (Mercury News).
Santa Monica Evening Outrage (Outlook).
San Francisco Comical (Chronicle).
Halifax Chronically Horrid (Chronicle-Herald).
Santa Barbara News-Suppress (News-Press).
San Antonio Excuse-for-News (Express-News).
Dallas Morning Snooze (News).
Austin American Real Estatesman (American-Statesman; the pejorative reflects the Sun Belt migration that has sent Texas' housing market into a boom).
Pilfered Daily News (Milford, Mass., Daily News, which may no longer deserve its reputation for copying stories from other papers).
Worcester Dullagram (Telegram).
Aviation Leak and Space Mythology (Aviation Week and Space Technology: it isn’t good at guarding secrets).
The Orillia Racket and Crimes (Packet and Times).
Toronto Sin (Sun).
Cornwall Standard Freeloader (Standard-Freeholder).
Kingston Substandard (Whig-Standard).
Owen Sound Stun Crimes (Sun Times).
Bloomington Horrible-Terrible (Herald-Telephone, an arcane name from a time when Indiana was impressed by telephones. It is now the Herald-Times. Old timers recall when a young reporter named Cheryl Magazine worked there and they could listen to her calling people and saying, “Hello, this is Cheryl Magazine at the Herald-Telephone … no, the newspaper, not the phone company … Magazine … no, it’s not a magazine, it’s a newspaper. I’m Magazine … hello? Hello?”).
Chattanooga News-free Press. The masthead says News-Free Press.
Arizona Repulsive (Republic).
Toronto Grope and Flail (Globe and Mail).
Green Bay Press-Gannett (Press-Gazette; it is one of the Gannett chain).
Laramie Daily Boomerag (Boomerang, said to be named after the first publisher’s mule, but some Wyoming news veterans say it’s because when the newsboy tossed copies onto the reader’s porches, the readers threw it back).
Carbondale Southern Illusion (Illioisan).
Bryan-College Station Buzzard (Eagle).
The Baltimore Stun (Sun).
Louisville Curious Jumble (Courier-Journal).
The Toledo Bland (Blade).
Bend Bullshit (Bulletin; Oregonians, in the American westerners' tradition, are frank).
West Chester Lack of News (West Chester, Pa., Local News).
Huntington Herald Disgrace (Herald Dispatch).
Charleston Daily Snail (Daily Mail).
South Bay Brays (Breeze).
Bangor Daily Snooze (News).
Portland Pressed Herring (Press Herald).
San Diego Onion (Union).
Albuquerque Urinal (Journal).
Charlotte Disturber (Observer).
Busy Week (Business Week).
The Christiansburg News Mess (News Press).
Redding Wretched Flashlight (Record Searchlight).
Las Vegas Son (Sun, a dynastic ownership situation).
Saskatoon Star Kleenex (Star Phoenix).
Houston Pest (Post).
Orlando Slantinel (Sentinel).
The Euphoria Gazelle (Emporia Gazette, but its Kansas staff in the flower-child era of the 1960s settled on something more melodious).
Gay Bimbos (Bay Windows, a Massachusetts newspaper serving homosexual readers).
Fitchburg-Leominster Emptyprize (Enterprise).
Useless News & World Distort (U.S. News & World Report).
Chesterton Ribtoon (Tribune).
Fort Wayne News Senile (Sentinel).
Charlottesville Regress (Progress).
Kent Wretched Courier (Record Courier).
Raleigh News Gets Absurder (News & Observer).
Rochester Demagogue & Comical (Democrat & Chronicle).
Columbus Distort (Dispatch).
Dover-New Philadelphia Times-Distorter (Times-Reporter).
Springfield Nuisance (News-Sun).
Columbia Manurian (Missourian).
Manassas Messy Journal (Journal Messenger).
Omaha Weird Harold (World Herald).
Waco Tribulation-Herald (Tribune-Herald).
Escondido Times-Adequate (Times-Advocate).
Santa Rosa Depressed Democrat (Press Democrat).
The Boston Glob (Globe).
Boston Hairball (Herald, but a newspaper given to coughing up scandal and sin).
The New York Crimes (Times, most Timeses are Slimeses, but important people at the Times were delighted when Reagan administration arms merchant Oliver North called it the Crimes, so it stuck).
Philadelphia Inky (Inquirer, as opposed to the Cincinnati Inky, or Enquirer).
Cincinnati Conspirer (Enquirer, when it’s not Inky).
Newsdaze (Newsday).
Fort Worth Startlegram (Star-Telegram).
Manhattan Turkey (Eagle).
The Canton Suppository (Repository).
Placerville Mountain Democrap (Democrat).
The Stars and Gripes (Stars and Stripes).
The New Orleans Times-Picka-You-Nose (Times-Picayune).
St. Louis Post-Disgrace (Post-Dispatch).
Miami Horrid (Herald).
Sioux Falls Argus Liar (Argus Leader).
Charlotte Disturber (Observer).
New Bedford Substandard-Times (Standard-Times).
Boulder Daily Chimera (Camera).
New Haven Rag (Register).
Palm Springs Desperate Sun (Desert Sun).
McPaper (USA Today; some purists consider it somewhat overdesigned, overmarketed, and occasionally arch).
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“PULL TO RIGHT WHEN FLASHING” [Road sign on highway outside Detroit. Submitted by Mary M. Tius, Portland, Maine, who reports that no light is visible in the vicinity of the sign.]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Due to the fact that the patient is an extremist and is responding poorly to fluids, the patient will be taken immediately to the operating room where exploratory laparotomy will be done.” [From a July 1986 hospital chart review. Submitted by John Williams, M.D. pathologist.]
Endearment Elucidation, or Love By Any Other Name
Alan Major, Canterbury
A news item published in a British national newspaper in February, 1995, gave details of a ban applied to a northern England city council’s telephonists working in the environmental services department by a senior director, stating the telephonists should no longer add the endearment luv while greeting a caller. The city’s “first citizen,” the Lord Mayor, a woman, was forthright in her condemnation of the ban as “petty.” She said the word would stay firmly in her vocabulary and added: “I use the word all the time. When I come into the Civic Hall I say ‘Good morning, luv’ to whomever I meet, from the cleaning ladies to officials. To ban luv would be like stopping the Geordies using the term pet and Nottingham folk addressing people as duck. My dad was a Yorkshire miner and he addressed folk as ‘old luv’ whether they were young or old. Its a term of endearment and a word we have used for years.”
This situation brings to public notice what words are used as terms of endearment in direct address between the sexes, more so a man to a woman. Some examples, however, are not quite what they seem. It is more than likely that at least some of the male humans using them are innocently unaware of the true meaning of a word or words they perhaps use daily. The word or words so used may not suit the person being addressed, in character or anatomical description, but, fortunately, the person thus spoken to may also be equally unaware.
Sweetheart was two words, known to Chaucer in Troylus (1374), as swete herte and in general can now logically be accurate in statements: “Yes, I know sweetheart,” when applied to a person with whom one is in love, be she girl friend or wife or “a female who by her actions and looks sweetens the affection in a man’s heart.” However, a previous meaning is given in Grove’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1796): “sweet heart, a girl’s lover or a man’s mistress.” Not quite the same thing, the OED takes this further as “one who is loved illicitly, a paramour.” Few married sweethearts will consider they are “loved illicitly” as a paramour or mistress! Sweetie or sweety is a short corruption of sweetheart, being in this sense a lovable person, a sweetie, or a willing person in certain situations: “Be a sweetie and fetch me the mail.” Sweet was also used as dear, “Yes, my sweet? I will do so, my sweet.” That other sweet commodity, sugar, got itself associated with endearments for women with combinations, as sugar baby, sugar babe, sugar pie.
Baby is still often used in endearing address, as slang chiefly in the US, for a young woman or girl friend, as in (sugar) baby, babe.
Honey fits here into an endearment classification, perhaps also used more in North America, where the British equivalent is darling. “Yes, I agree, honey” Yes, I agree, darling.” Formerly, it was chiefly Irish and Scandinavian, used in the form of hinnie, hinney, but back in 1386, Chaucer, in The Miller’s Tale wrote of “Alisoun, his honey deare.” As with sugar there are also honey-baby, honey bunch, honey bun.
Dear is very, very common in use and overheard daily in many street, supermarket, or shopping center conversations. It was formerly applied to a woman who had an endearing personality, who was beloved, esteemed, a person on whom to lavish affection, the man’s cherished dear. But do they always mean this when a man uses it now? Or is it, as seems to be, often said “Yes, dear. No, dear,” to obtain uncontradictory agreement with the partner?
Now, as dear, darling is in common use by anybody for anyone: “Yes, I know, darling, it is such a bore.” It is also used in the same context as sweetie: “Be a darling and fetch me the mail.” A darling was a young, lovable, charming, usually young, woman who was admired and desired, prized among eligible men because the woman was (supposedly) of good morals, thus chaste and a good “catch” to woo and win as a wife. Dearing and dearling are both forms of darling, but much less often heard nowadays.
Popsy, popsie, popsy-wopsy may sound North American in origin because of their use in radio and music-hall songs, but they are much older than that. Popsies date back to 1862 as an endearing designation: “Popsy have you seen my toothbrush?” and, according to the OED is “a kind of running extension of pop, an endearing appellation for a girl friend, woman, a casual female acquaintance.” “Pop, have you seen my toothbrush” does not have the same endearment to it somehow, possibly because of its use as a term of address for father or an old man. It is also possible they are a corruption of poppet, poppit, poppette, poopet, from the French poupette ‘doll,’ an endearment still used though ancient, poppet being the name for a pretty child or a dainty young woman. “Just a minute, poppet, and I will mend it.” In 1386, Chaucer, in Sir Thopas, states: “This were a popet …. For any womman smal and fayre of face.”
“Yes, my precious” is a term of endearment occasionally used, precious being from the Old French precios, precieus ‘valuable, having a high price and a beloved person held very dear.’ When applied to a woman could this be what the Bible means when it states: “A good woman is above rubies”?
As a term of endearment girlie and girly are in the same category as popsy: “Girlie, have you seen my toothbrush?” in the sense of being less often heard, although it goes back to the 19th century. A reference to it is in a book, The Artist and Craftsman (1860), which has a mysterious comment: “The little half clad girlies ran off to hide themselves.” With tongue in cheek I am tempted to suggest this may be the origin of the name for certain publications that feature half-clad and nude young women and known now as girlie magazines.
The Geordies do use pet as an endearment for wife or girl friend: “I won’t forget, pet,” also in more general terms in conversing with people of all ages. Pet is a name for a woman treated with special kindness, indulged as a favorite companion. Samuel Johnson possibly had something similar in mind for his Dictionary (1755), when he classified “peat, a darling, a little fondling, a dear plaything.”
Duck, as in Nottinghamshire and elsewhere in Britain, seems an odd word to use as an expression of affection. However, it has been around a long time, too. In 1590 Shakespeare used it in his A Midsummer Night’s Dream, v. i 282: “O dainty ducke, a deere.” Duck, sometimes ducks, tended to be used by older men to a girl friend or wife, sometimes a woman of casual acquaintance, such as a barmaid or waitress. Duckie, duckey, ducky is a diminutive of duck. Today it is used occasionally in affected, familiar speech: “Yes, I know, duckie, exactly how you felt,” here being in place of dear or darling. A sweet, pretty affectionate girl or young woman was said to be duckie.
So we come back to where we started, with luv and love. It has had a varied history. Originally a love was only a widow, the love of the dead husband. Old English church burial records often contain entries as “paid to John Stokeley’s love two pence.” A later use was for an attractive, lovely woman, then in another context as a paramour, from the Old French par amour ‘by love, a woman of passion.’ Then it came into general use, as it still is, for a beloved person, in particular a sweetheart, but also as a term of endearing address to a casual acquaintance, as the lady Lord Mayor of the northern city.
There are, of course, many words used by men in actual reference to women, such as bird, dolly, doll, tart, boot, plum, strumpet, jade, quean, and so on. Being a gentleman I wouldn’t think or dare to explain them here.
Crossing
William H. Dougherty, Santa Fe
Crossing language boundaries is not uncommon in literature, the performing arts, or for that matter in everyday speech. There is more than one way of doing it. The comedian Sid Caesar used to utter gibberish that sounded like Japanese or German without meaning anything in any language. Ernest Hemingway in such books as For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea wrote some dialogue in language that was phonetically English but suggests Spanish by its simpler, more formal grammar.
More common, however, is the insertion into a work in one language the words, phrases, or passages from another language. In literature this kind of inclusion, besides having snob value for writer and reader or audience, lends authenticity. These are the very words; e.g., “Eli, Eli, lama sabach thani?” (Matthew 27.46). Shakespeare included some dialogue in French in Henry V, Act III, Scene V:
KATHE. Alice, tu as este en Angleterre, et tu bien parlas le Langage.
ALICE. En peu Madame.
KATHE. Ie te prie m ensigniez, il faut que ie apprend a parlen: comient appelle vous le main en Anglois?
(The errors in this French dialogue as it appears in the First Folio, some or all of which may be typos, have been edited out of subsequent editions, such as The Annotated Shakespeare, edited by A.L. Rowse.)
Tolstoi introduced whole pages of impeccable French into the Russian text of War and Peace, as did Goytisolo, for a more recent example, into his Señas de Identidad. French, perhaps because it is a language of prestige, seems to be transplanted more carefully than other modern languages. Ramón J. Sender has quotations in three languages on the frontispiece of his novel La Tesis de Nancy:
Es tarea de discretos hacer reír.
Cervantes
Je me presse de rire de tout, de peur d'être obligé d’en pleurer.
Beaumarchais
(So far, so good; but:)
Does thou laugh to see how fools are vexed?
T. Dekker
English generally fares rather poorly in Spanish texts, and vice versa.
Ezra Pound, for all his provincial pedantry, in his Canto LXXXI as printed on p. 526 of The New Oxford Book of American Verse, writes didactically:
Hay aquí mucho catolicismo [pronounced catolithismo] y muy poco reliHion
The o in reliHion ought to carry a written accent, as does the i of aquí, and poco ought to be poca.
As far as I know, the most recent example of extensive switching to Spanish—or for that matter to any foreign language—in an English-language text is to be found in the two already published books of Cormac McCarthy’s much-acclaimed Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing, especially the latter. McCarthy excels in the laconic, colloquial dialogue of his Texas and New Mexico cowboys, and the untranslated lingo of his Mexican characters generally rings true as well. He does occasionally err, though, and one cannot help wondering what arrogance keeps an author like Sender or McCarthy from having his text proofread by a competent native speaker. First let us scan the first novel of the trilogy, All the Pretty Horses.
Cuánto, said John Grady.
Para todo? [p. 51]
Por todo? is correct and usual. Since almost any grammatical rule that can be broken in any language is sometimes broken, I cannot say that McCarthy has never heard a Mexican say Para todo, meaning ‘for the whole [purchase]?’ But I tested the two phrases on a New Mexico Hispanic of about the same type as the clerk in the book and confirmed that por, not para, is not only the correct word but also the usual word in Spanish meaning ‘for’ in the sense of ‘in payment of.’
Soy comandante de las yegunas … yo y yo sólo. Sin la caridad de estas manos no tengas nada. [p. 128]
I see no reason to use the present subjunctive (tengas) here. No tendrías or possibly even no tuvieras sounds more grammatical and more likely. Here McCarthy spells comandante right, but on pages 208 and 228 his English misleads him into misspelling the Spanish word with two m’s.
Digame, he said. Cuál es lo peor. Que soy pobre o que soy americano.
The vaquero shook his head. Una llave de oro abre cualquier puerta, he said.
Tienes razón, said John Grady. [p. 147]
Here and elsewhere in the two novels we find a shuttling between familiar and formal verb forms (Digame/Tienes) that certainly happens in Spanish, as it did in Elizabethan English as evidenced in King Henry IV, Part II, Act II, Scene IV:
Dol. Captain! thou abominable damned cheater, art thou not ashamed to be called captain! An captains were of my mind, they would truncheon you out, for taking their names upon you before you have earned them. You a captain!
And I once heard a Segovian graduate of Salamanca University say Venga to a small, timid dog. Still, in McCarthy’s Mexican dialogue he shuttles between familiar and formal verb forms with an abandon that I find a bit excessive. There are other examples of this inconsistency on pages 202 and 259 in the first novel.
On page 151 and on pages 174 and 175: ciénaga, the Iberian form of the noun appears instead of the Mexican form, ciénega. Also, the place name that McCarthy has as Cuatro Ciénagas appears on the AAA map of Mexico as Cuatrocienegas.
Quién és usted? [p. 205]
The written accent on the verb is wrong here. As we shall see, McCarthy gets quite wild with his accents in the more extensive Spanish of his second novel.
Gracias.
De nada. [p. 222]
I have heard Mexicans say de nada (‘you’re welcome’), but por nada is particularly Mexican. I have had Spaniards identify my Spanish as of the Mexican variety, more or less, because of my saying por nada, the more typical expression in Mexico.
Cúal caballo? [p. 262]
Now, here is an expression where McCarthy is at odds with grammar-book usage, which would prescribe Qué caballo?, but right for popular Mexican usage.
In The Crossing McCarthy hits his stride in dialogue in colloquial Mexican Spanish and does himself proud. Some readers might think him a bit presumptuous. I am not sure that his Spanish here, any more than in the first novel, is faulty at all, except for incorrect written accents, in the sense that Mexicans would never say what he has them saying. Sometimes, as noted above, his Spanish dialogue in being technically ungrammatical faithfully reflects popular usage, as is the case with his English dialogue. For instance Estoy regresándole a mi país [p. 412]. The Pequeño Larousse Ilustrado dictionary brands this transitive use of the verb regresar as a “barbarismo.” But McCarthy’s characters are barbaric—sometimes nobly so—if nothing else, and regresar is exactly right here. And speaking of popular expressions, on page 275 we find blanquillos, the euphemism for “eggs” that has been the subject of three recent EPISTOLAE in VERBATIM.
On pages 43 and 414 appears the more common Mexican expression por nada instead of de nada.
On pages 44 and 47: matríz. There should be no written accent here. McCarthy, who seems to be contemptuous of punctuation in any language, rarely writes accents where they are not needed but often omits them where they are, e.g., mia [pp. 90, 117]; borrachon [p. 227]; mascara [p. 229]; perdida [p. 283]; asi [p. 284]; haran [p. 290]; and que [p. 318].
Tan como preguntar lo que saben las piedras.
[p. 45]
I think that the substantive tanto ought to be here instead of the adverbial tan.
Todos que vengas alrededor. [p. 88]
To agree with its subject the verb should be vengan. The second-person singular form is probably a typographic error.
Es lejos? [p. 102]
I think that está for location should be here, as it is in a similar context on page 236.
No le molesta. [p. 123]
I cannot say that Mexicans never use the second-person imperative negatively in real life as here and on pages 281, 305, and 312. But correctly and popularly, too, and as on page 306 (No te preocupes), the subjunctive is used for a negative imperative in the second-person singular. Canta y no llores … the old song goes.
Tengo miedo es verdad. [p. 138]
Here the subjunctive sea is called for.
Los hombres han salido por Madero? [p. 225]
Is the Madero here the same place as the Madera on page 404? In any case, if Madero is a place, para or pa' should be here instead of por. The leader Madero died in 1913.
Ya nos hemos encontrado la mujer y el hombre.
[p. 284]
Here, on page 292 (…no podemos ver el buen Dios), and on page 297 (Busca el herido, no?), both grammar and custom call for an a before the personal object of the verb.
Los aspectos de las cosas son engañosas. [p. 290]
Here the adjective fails to agree in gender with the noun it modifies.
Quizás hay poca de justicia… [p. 293]
Either the de should be omitted or poco instead of poca should be here.
Que joven tan enforzado. [p. 318]
The adjective here may be a dialect form unknown to me, but more likely it is a typographical error for esforzado.
In a way this essay is complimentary. If McCarthy’s Mexican dialogue were not so close to perfection as it is, one would not be challenged to nitpick through it but would simply dismiss it as incompetent.
English Arrivals in Hungary
Elizabeth Bencze, Norwich
Hungarians have always been fiercely proud of their language, a non Indo-European island in a sea of Slavic, Germanic, and Romance tongues. Its origins are obscure, but we know that it is distantly related to Finnish and belongs to the Finno-Ugric group of languages.
Part of the fun for the visitor to Hungary is the battle to understand anything at all, whether the words are spoken or written. I remember how delighted I was, on my first visit to Budapest some years ago, when I spotted the word szendvics on the menu of a small restaurant. Yes, it meant ‘sandwich’ and was at least one word I could recognize. Mind you, it was difficult to find a restaurant in the first place, the word for ‘restaurant’ being étterem in Hungarian.
Until recently, the Hungarians accepted foreign words only grudgingly, preferring to create new ones of their own. At one time they even invented a Hungarian word for ‘telephone’: távbeszélö (literally, ‘distance talker’; a calque of German Fernsprecher). But, although this word can be found in the dictionary, it is hardly ever heard. Telefon is the more popular term and the one which, fortunately for the tourist, can be seen on every kiosk.
Since the fall of the Berlin wall and all that came after, there has been an unstoppable flood of English words pouring into Hungary. It is no surprise to find that the new language of computers has been fully integrated into Hungarian: words like hardver and softver are commonplace. But over the last few years a stream of everyday English words has stormed through the language barrier. This is not only because the country is now bombarded with English language TV programs on various European channels, but also because western pop culture has taken such a strong hold among the young.
A random selection of English loanwords—with no Hungarian translation given—taken from recent newspapers, magazines, and conversations, includes the following:
mani ‘money’; kes ‘cash’; menedzser ‘manager’; deler ‘dealer’; biznisz ‘business’; marketing; lizing ‘leasing’; frencsajz ‘franchise’; holding; diszkont ‘discount’
bébi szitter; drink; heppening; hostess; New Age; jogging; dizajn ‘design’; toples; jackpot; horror; tinedzer ‘teenager’; fitness club
And on Budapest shop fronts you can now see strange “szlogans” displayed in English: Non-Stop ‘open 24 hours’; and the mysterious Goods Made in World
It will be interesting to see how many of these words, reflecting current preoccupations in Hungary, will be accepted permanently. I think most of them will, and I, for one, regret this. Something of the uniqueness of the Hungarian language will be lost for ever. Besides, what challenge will there be for the enterprising tourist?
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“The sound of snoring is due to vibration of the soft palate and the vulva at the back of the throat.” [From the Evening Times Globe of St. John, N.B., 1 October 1993. Submitted by Jon Simpson, Quispamsis, N.B.]
Bespeaking a Muse or What?
Paul Blackford, Bangkok
Surely a lot of the joy of learning a new language lies in observing how it expresses everyday objects and operations. (This does not apply to British pupils forced to learn French by rote in mediocre schools and vice versa, nor to Asians learning English in the same way, for that matter.) This is particularly true for me of a language like Thai, which is geographically and grammatically half a world away from my mother tongue, English, such that many Thai locutions give pause and delight.
In Insight Guides' Thailand one reads:
Many common Thai words when translated bespeak a muse or a minstrel. Some examples: spirit’s clothes = butterfly; slow forest = cemetery; sky cries out = thunder; sky fire = electricity; walking stomach = diarrhoea; rice scarce and fruit dear = famine.
Hyperbole or not? Some may see the prosaic where others see the poetic. I tend towards the latter. And when the Thai-language wrestles with new words for alien imports like ice ‘hard water’ or parachute ‘umbrella for supporting life,’ some might be amused at how downright literal Thai can be or impressed at how admirably sensible it so often is.
In the following list, the Thai words are glossed literally, then are given their English equivalents. A little imagination may be all that is required in the minstrelly mode to discern the poetic connection. [N.B.: Thai is very economical with articles, prepostions, and conjunctions so I have added these where necessary for the sake of clarity. Lit.= literally; Euph. = euphemism; Sl. = slang; Obs. = obsolete]
see daeng leuat nok, Lit. ‘bird’s-blood red’: ‘crimson’
see leuat moo, Lit. ‘pig’s-blood color’: ‘scarlet’
see chompoo, Lit. ‘rose-apple color’: ‘pink’
see fah, Lit. ‘sky color’: ‘light blue’
see nam tarn, Lit. ‘palm-sugar color’: ‘brown’ (Before white sugar arrived from the West, Thais refined sugar from the tarn tree: nam tarn ‘water of the tarn tree’ refers to sugar, and, the Thai word for ‘brown’ refers to the color of the water of the tarn tree) .bqe
see kee mah, Lit. ‘horse-shit color’: ‘dark green’
fuk tong, Lit. ‘squashed gold’: ‘pumpkin’
mare nam, Lit. ‘mother of water’: ‘river’
mare lek, Lit. ‘mother of iron’: ‘magnet’
mare bahn, Lit. ‘mother of a house’: ‘housewife’
mare [pore] kar, Lit. ‘mother [or father] of trade’: ‘street vendor’
ying rap chai, Lit. ‘woman who is the recipient of use’: ‘maid’
look peun, Lit. ‘child of a gun’: ‘bullet’
look fai, Lit. ‘child of fire’: ‘spark’
more doo, Lit. ‘doctor who can see’: ‘fortuneteller’
yah see fan, Lit. ‘medicine for rubbing the teeth’: ‘toothpaste’
yah soop, Lit. ‘sucking medicine’: ‘tobacco’
yah mah, (Sl.) Lit. ‘horse medicine’: ‘amphetamines’ (Presumably because they give one the strength and endurance of a horse.)
noey keng, Lit. ‘hard butter’: ‘cheese’
malaeng wan, Lit. ‘day insect’: ‘fly’ (They are seen only in the daytime)
malaeng mum, Lit. ‘corner insect’: ‘spider’
malaeng sahb, Lit. ‘foul-smelling insect’: ‘cockroach’ (After being crushed.)
pla meuk, Lit. ‘ink fish’: ‘squid’
kreuang len jarn siang, (Obs.), Lit. ‘machine for playing a sound plate’: ‘record player’ (Now hifi or sataireo is used.)
kreuang yep kradart, (Obs.), Lit. ‘machine for sewing paper’: ‘stapler’ (Mak, from the Japanese company MAX is now used. The Japanese for ‘stapler’ is Hotchkiss, after the American maker.)
rok poo ying, Lit. ‘women’s disease’: ‘syphilis’ (Formerly, syphilis was transmitted through brothels, where it was “spontaneously generated.” This has been replaced by sifilit.)
nam nom, Lit. ‘water of the breast’: ‘milk’
hua nom, Lit. ‘head of the breast’: ‘nipple’
hua mare meua, Lit. ‘head mother of the hand’: ‘thumb’
nam man, Lit. ‘oily water’: ‘gasoline’
nam man moo, Lit. ‘oily water of the pig’: ‘lard’
seua nam man, Lit. ‘oil mat’: ‘linoleum’
gang geng nai, Lit. ‘inner trousers’: ‘underpants’
gang geng ling, (Sl.), Lit. ‘monkey trousers’: ‘underpants’ (Formerly, traveling shows featured monkeys dressed in diapers/nappies.)
seua nork, Lit. ‘outer shirt’: ‘jacket’
seua nao, Lit. ‘cold shirt’: ‘sweater, pullover, jumper’
seua kloom, Lit. ‘enveloping shirt’: ‘overcoat’
seua yok song, Lit. ‘shirt for raising or supporting the figure’: ‘brassiere’ (Now blah, from bra, is almost universal.)
arkart sia, Lit. ‘broken air’: ‘air pollution’
look kit, Lit. ‘thinking balls’; ‘abacus’
dao nee sin, Lit. ‘master of debt’: ‘creditor’
look nee sin, Lit. ‘child of debt’: ‘debtor’
ngern cheua, Lit. ‘money believed in’: ‘credit’
ngern sot, Lit. ‘fresh money’: ‘cash’
nam tarng, Lit. ‘stranded water’: ‘dew’
fah poh, Lit. ‘flash of the sky’: ‘lighting’
reva bai, Lit. ‘boat with a leaf’: ‘sailboat’
tung yahng arnamai, Lit. (Euph.), Lit. ‘hygienic rubber bag’: ‘condom’
pah arnamai, (Euph.) Lit. ‘hygienic cloth’: ‘sanitary napkin’ (Kotek from Kotex was generic for a time, as was earlier Tam from Tampax; with so many rival brands available, path arnamai has been reverted to.)
nang seua dern tahng, Lit. ‘book for walking a path or route’: ‘passport’
dtit gap, (conjunction), Lit. ‘stuck with’: ‘next to’
ngern sin bon, (Euph.), Lit. ‘money for increasing wealth’: ‘bribe’
Classic Wit
Burling Lowrey, Washington, D.C.
At a time when dumb “one-liners” and tasteless jokes can be tossed off on TV and elsewhere as examples of wit without causing anyone to cringe, perhaps the moment has arrived to make some distinctions and straighten out the nomenclature among those terms that fall under the umbrella of “eliciting laughter.”
We might start with the criteria for classic wit, the highest form of humor, that is set up by Walter Nash in the Oxford Companion to the English Language. According to Nash, true wit must meet the following standards: (1) The practitioner must have a quick mind, (2) The witticism must be stated within a very tight framework, and (3) It is characterized by four common rhetorical devices: parallelism, antithesis, definition, and “quasi-philosophical” propositions, an example being Woody Allen’s line, “Not only is God dead, but try getting a plumber on Sunday.” One might add that classic wit is usually motivated by malice, which must be stated artfully, and the malice is frequently at someone else’s expense. To this, I would attach my own definition: To qualify as wit, a retort must be no more than five words.
Clearly, then, what sets wit apart from humor is its cerebral quality and its verbal conciseness. Other terms that elicit laughter are lower on the pecking order because, although they may display quick thinking, they may lack the “tight framework.” Others pass the conciseness test but may be too contrived. Gentle or kindly humor fails the test for obvious reasons.
Scores of lines that meet these criteria come to mind. My favorite is a retort by former college football coach, Duffy Dougherty, to a remark that football is a “contact” sport. Duffy cracked, “Dancing is a contact sport. Football is a collision sport.” This strikes me as remarkable because, although Dougherty was not a literary person, he managed to combine an ironic analogy and parallelism to come up with a line that could be called pure wit.
Another broad term under the “eliciting laughter” premise is joke. In a way a joke, in its structure, is the antithesis of a witticism in that is usually placed within a narrative framework and withholds any response until the punch line is reached. In this sense, timing is extremely important. We know that if any joke begins with “A guy walks into a bar with an iguana on a leash, sits down, and orders a zombie …,” we may be in for a long detailed narrative that may or may not be funny.
Two terms that come close to being classic wit are quip and wisecrack, both of them Americanisms. These slangy expressions meet Nash’s standard of conciseness in that they are pointed come-backs to a situation or a remark. However, they fall short in that their tone is sarcastic rather than malicious. Dorothy Parker once noted that “Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.” Although the quip and the wisecrack are usually quite shallow, George S. Kaufman, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, managed to turn the wisecrack into an art form. At one point he told Groucho Marx that a line he was supposed to deliver in a movie which Kaufman had scripted was not funny. Groucho, urging patience, replied, “Remember, they laughed at Fulton when he invented the steamboat.” To which Kaufman cracked, “Not at matinées.”
Even farther down in the pecking order is the term, gag. Again, some distinctions are called for. In American theater parlance, the term gag is used frequently to differentiate “funny lines” in a movie script or stage comedy from mere jokes that are exchanged indiscriminately in everyday life. Neil Simon, the chief practitioner of the theatrical gag, has given this form of humor a new respect, if only because of its frequency in his comedies. In fact, punchy ripostes are sprinkled so heavily throughout Simon’s comedies that people have been led to believe that he writes the gags first, then fleshes out the rest of the play around them. All this has placed a monkey on Simon’s back. He would like to be considered a wit, perhaps the Samuel Johnson of American letters, but he will never achieve such eminence so long as he churns out gags, assembly-line fashion.
Two terms, now considered somewhat archaic, that fit into the category of “eliciting laughter” are jest and sally. Most people associate jest with Shakespeare’s clowns and that over-quoted line from Romeo and Juliet, “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.” In current American usage, the term resembles what we call “kidding”: that is, making fun of someone or some thing in a frivolous manner, such as in the obligatory banter at “roasts” of famous people. What separates a jest from a witticism is its lack of malice. A jest is never uttered at someone else’s expense.
A sally is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as “a sudden quick witticism.” In other words, it is a line that is uttered off the top of one’s head and, therefore, may or may not be funny.
In the last few years, the expression one-liner has developed into an all-purpose usage. It seems to be an outgrowth of sound bite, a phenomenon of television communication in which politicians and pundits are required to reduce complex ideas to one concise sentence. For example, Ross Perot expressed his disapproval of NAFTA and GATT by saying that, relative to jobs in this country, these trade agreements would create a “giant sucking sound.” In a political context, “You’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” is another sound bite that now seems firmly established in the language. While the leap from a sound bite to a witticism appears to be easy to manage, few politicians have been inclined to take the risk and be labeled as a wise-guy or a smart-ass.
To conclude, we might note that there is no shortage of Americans who have an urge to say something funny. What is missing is a standard for judging “funniness.” Perhaps these distinctions I have made will help in that direction.
No Nicknames in the Valleys
Roger Dobson
Jones The Meat, Dai Scab and Evans Above should be preserved for posterity, says a leading sociologist. Traditional Welsh nicknames, on the decline with population changes and the break-up of communities once dominated by the coal industry, need to be collected before they are lost forever, says Christie Davies, Professor of Sociology at Reading University. Increased migration, with Welsh people moving out and English people moving in, has played a large part in the demise of the nicknames which were once in widespread use and which many regard as a unique art form.
Humorous nicknames such as Dai Bungalow for a man with little upstairs mentally, Dai Bolical, the miner who never washed, and Evans Above, the undertaker, are the most savoured examples. Others stem from events or habits, like Dai Scab, whose grandfather worked during a strike 70 years ago and Amen Jones, who made the loudest responses in church.
“Traditional nicknames in England like Dusty Miller and Chalky White tended to disappear some time ago, and it is simply happening later in Wales,” said Prof Davies. “There is not the need for them that there was. I would very much like to see them recorded.”
The nicknames developed from the need to distinguish between people in the same village with the same name. It was not unknown for a single community, for instance, to have 10 men called David Jones, largely as a result of the limited choice of surnames, Jones, Williams and Evans, coupled with a passion for Biblical Christian names, David, John and Thomas.
“As a result of this need to distinguish, some very humorous names developed. There was one man who had only two front teeth in the middle and was known as Dai Central Eating. Another man was one of those people who keep repeating the same word in almost every sentence and he as known as Evans Absolutely,” said Professor Davies. “In many of the valley communities the nicknames, usually reserved for men rather than women, arose from their job, or an unfortunate incident, or a physical or speech defect.”
Robin Gwyndaf, assistant keeper at the Welsh Folk Museum, said: “In the old coal mining communities you had to distinguish between the David Joneses. They were characters and they did not mind being called nicknames; it added colour to life. Areas where people have moved away or commute to work outside the community are the most likely to be affected.”
John Walter Jones, chief executive of the Welsh Language Board, says that widened horizons may also be to blame: “The world has widened and some of the things that used to be local have been lost in that widening process.”
Gus Jones, a retired lecturer in Cardiff who has studied the nicknames, said: “They are on the decline. These days people jump into their cars, go to work out of the community and you don’t have this close-knit society which breeds these nicknames.” He added: “We have quite a few examples of humorous names. There was, for instance, a miner in the Swansea valley who 30 years ago started playing golf, which was something unheard of. He was ever after known as Dai Swank. There was also a fashion that men with common surnames were known by their mothers' names. There was a mine manager, David Evans, who was known as Dai Hannah. One day he was working underground and ordered the miners to replace all the ventilation doors. After that he was known as Dai Hannah Dors.
“An example that I particularly like is a man who got married during the Thirties recession and wore daps, or plimsolls, during the ceremony. He has always been known as Dai Quiet Wedding.”
©Copyright 1994. The Sunday Independent, 4 December 1994. Reprinted by permission.
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: William Tyndale: A Biography
David Daniell, (Yale University Press, 1994), xi + 429pp. (including 3 appendixes, notes, bibliography, and index).
In his immensely popular A Short History of the English People (1874), John Richard Green described the profound moral and cultural change that transformed the country in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. “England became the people of a book,” he wrote, “and that book was the Bible.” Although he does not specify, it seems likely Green means the 1611 Authorized (or King James) Version, for he goes on: “As a mere literary monument, the English version of the Bible remains the noblest example of the English tongue, while its perpetual use made it from the instant of its appearance the standard of our language.”
Green was neither the first nor last to sing hosannas to the AV, and most extollers have especially praised the awesome consistency of its excellence, considering it was the work of 47 scholars and divers divines. “Astonishment is still voiced that the dignitaries … spoke so often with one voice,” says Bible scholar David Daniell, professor emeritus of the University of London. And the reason, Daniell quickly adds, is that it was virtually one voice: that of William Tyndale, one of the most influential—and certainly one of the least known—writers in English history. Unsung Tyndale certainly is. According to a chronology of significant literary works, only one important book was published in the 1520s, John Skelton’s The Garlande of Laurell, in which the author allegorically enthrones himself among the great poets of the world. But in 1526, smuggled copies of Tyndale’s “heretical” translation of the New Testament began appearing in England, to the great consternation of the establishment, including Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey, and Sir Thomas More, and to the lasting glory of the English language.
To those lucky and adventurous citizens who got their hands on copies before they were seized and burned (the books, that is, but also sometimes the citizens), this was a Bible with a belt. It was lively and colloquial, meaningful and memorable. But most of all, it was in plain but powerful English. Until this point, the only Bible that anyone knew was the Vulgate Latin version translated by St. Jerome a millennium before. John Wycliffe had rendered this in English in 1382, but that was pre-printing press, and hand copies of this stilted, verbatim Lollard construction were scarce.
But here, in the spring of 1526, was a book that rang out the scriptures “as sounding brass.” Here was gospel that cut to the chase: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find”; “filthy lucre”; “Eat, drink and be merry”; “salt of the earth”; “signs of the times”; “a law unto themselves.” “In the beginning” came five years later, when Tyndale’s similarly contraband Pentateuch started arriving from Europe. In this, too, the stunning simplicity of Tyndale’s words caught the public’s imagination.
If England became the people of a book and that book was the Bible, then that Bible was for the most part Tyndale’s—a claim argued persuasively and passionately by David Daniell in William Tyndale: A Biography, published in the fall of 1994, the quincentenary of the translator’s birth. Daniell warmed up to the task by publishing modern-spelling versions of Tyndale’s New Testament and Pentateuch, also produced by Yale University Press, in 1989 and 1992. Daniell’s book, the first serious biography since J.F. Mozley’s William Tyndale in 1937, travels familiar paths. But it is like cruising a smoothly paved freeway in a Mercedes, as opposed to jolting down a country lane in a Model-A Ford. The same can be said of Tyndale’s poetic prose. In the Vulgate, Genesis 1:3 says: “Dixitque Deus: Fiat lux! et facta est lux.” Wycliffe’s painfully literal first edition has this: “And God said, Be made light; and made is light.” Compare that to Tyndale’s enduring rendition: “Then God said: Let there be light and there was light.”
Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire and attended Oxford and Cambridge, where the spirit of the recently departed Erasmus still glowed. He became a priest, but his reformist zeal soon earned him enmity in high places. He believed religion was atrophying under the deadly dogmatism of the Roman church. What proved even more dangerous to his health was his frequently and loudly aired opinion that the truth lay in the scripture, not in the pope. The only way to regenerate a flagging faith was to allow people to read The Word in their own language. This could not safely be done in England— nor, in the end, even in Europe, in spite of its more advanced reform, mainly under the influence of Luther. Tyndale had finished the Book of Jonah, on his way to completing the Old Testament, when he was betrayed, arrested, and convicted of heresy. On Oct. 6, 1536, he was strangled at the stake, and his body burnt. His last words were, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” Shortly afterward, Henry VIII, whether in answer to that prayer or because of his own marriage-related difficulties with Rome, made himself head of the English church. One of his first acts was to commission an English-language Bible. It, and all its successors, bore the unmistakable imprint of Tyndale.
What distinguished Tyndale’s work from earlier English efforts was that he translated the New Testament straight from its native Greek and his Pentateuch from Hebrew, without the distorting filter of Jerome’s Latin. Aside from setting down dozens of enduring clichés. Tyndale wrote in a timeless vernacular, not all of it echoed in the AV. When Noah’s survivors decide to climb to heaven, the AV tells it in this archaic, Elizabethan way: “And they said to one another, Go to, let us build a city and a tower.” In Tyndale’s version, the builders of Babel, with surprising modernity, say: “Come on, let us build a tower.”
Fortunately, and contrary to King James' instructions, the compilers of the AV did keep a lot of Tyndale, while taking care not to divulge that source. Some say up to 80 per cent of that glorious text is from the pen of the great but uncelebrated translator. Others say that, of the really glorious parts, it is 100 per cent.
[Robertson Cochrane, Toronto]
Those readers who have been paying attention know that I have high praise for the Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on Compact Disc, a CD-ROM edition of the great dictionary that enables users to search the entire text in a matter of seconds— depending on the complexity of the search and the number of results turned up—far less time than it takes to get up, walk over to the bookshelf, take down a volume, and find what one is seeking. Now something called Version 1.1 Upgrade has been made available for about £60 (including shipping), and I have been using it. To quote from the manual:
There are three principal enhancements: (i) the addition of a Windows installation program, (ii) the ability to display and print out using True Type™ fonts, (iii) the inclusion of an RTF (Rich Text Format copying facility to MSWord for Windows 2.0 (or higher) and a DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) link to MSWord for Windows 2.0 (or higher).
As I do not have MSWord 2.0 (or higher), the last item means nothing to me; as the system is already installed into Windows on my computers, some installation program must have come with the original, so I do not know what item (i) refers to. Item (ii) is a marvelous addition, though, for I have been able, in the past, to get some data printed out from the file, but it seemed to work at whim, and I could never be sure that I would get anything, let alone what I was after. Now all doubt in that department is at an end: call up an entry on the screen, invoke the FILE, and a menu opens to reveal a number of choices that allow one to print the entire entry or only the part that has been highlighted. It is extremely rapid, and the entries are printed out fully styled typographically.
Without going into too much detail about previously existing programs, suffice it to say that one has to write a command in the proper “query language”; once invoked, that command produces a file called a “results file,” which may now be printed using a menu similar to that for the entries. There are a few other enhancements, as well, but they are too detailed for comment here. It is assumed that all present owners of the OED2e on CD have registered and, if so, will receive notice of the enhancements. Those who have not or wish to learn more about the entire package should write to Oxford University Press / Walton Street / Oxford OX2 6DP / England.
I must take the opportunity for criticism of a section of the original manual which has not been enhanced in the new one: I have always found the query language instructions quite cryptic; indeed, when I followed them character for character I often got no results at all. There are some examples given, but more examples of each type would prove helpful, and one hopes that OUP will take heed and issue even a two-page typewritten addendum. The problem stems in no small part from the fact that—as usual—by the time the manual is written, the programmers are so familiar with the terminology they have been using while writing the programs that they lose sight of the users' ignorance. Also, it would save time if there were a command allowing the user to Save and Run a query with one command: at present, after Save, one must call up the query again from the FILE menu, just another bit of rigmarole. Perhaps there is a way of doing that, but the manual is silent on it.
The enormous convenience of the OED2e on CD is unmatched by any other CD in my files: I use it almost daily with refreshed delight and wonder.
Laurence Urdang
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Through the use of ultrasound, University of Washington researcher … studies women who develop high blood pressure during pregnancy with the assistance of AHA-WA funds.” [From Heartlines, a Washington affiliate newsletter of the American Heart Association, Vol. VI, No. 2, 1988.]
BIBLIOGRAPHIA:
As a newsletter editor I find myself looking up acronyms and initialisms. Here are three recent books I found useful.
Acronym Soup: A Stirring Guide to Our Newest Word Form
Gilda and Phil Feldman, (William Morrow and Company, 1994).
This quirky tome was compiled by a husband and wife team who used the Los Angeles Times database. By no means a complete list, it is Hollywood hip and maybe even funny. The Feldmans suggest that other acronym books take themselves too seriously. I gave this book a test. Did it have some acronyms I came across in my reading? Nothing about IDRIS [Integrated Data Retrieval System], which I found in a Treasury Department manual. ATM [asychronous transfer mode, a term used in the computer world] was not listed. FTP [Folded, Trimmed, Packed?], listed on the dust jacket was not explained inside.
Acronyms, Initialisms & Abbreviations Dictionary: A Guide
Jennifer Mossman, ed., (Gale, 1995).
I found this in a Washington library that received it on June 28, 1994. This study comes out every year with more than 500,000 listings.
Dictionary of Military Abbreviations
Norman Polmar, ed., (Naval Institute, 1994).
At least three publishers are betting there is money in acronyms. Some government entities publish acronym lists. The Federal Election Commission recently got out a 41-page directory of 709 pactronyms. Notapac [not listed in Alphabet Soup] made it into this official listing. Glenn R. Simpson, a writer at Washington’s Roll Call newspaper and Notapac’s creator, says he chose the name “as a clue” that his committee is not a real fund-raising political action committee [PAC]. He says he started Notapac mainly to get on mailing lists. “I find it amusing that no one has bumped me off the Federal Election Commission list,” Mr. Simpson told The Wall Street Journal. “I never even set up a bank account.” The third edition of the Federal Election Commission’s directory of pactronyms lists groups active in the political arena.
[Hunter Holmes Alexander, Editor, RTC Spectrum]
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Cambridge International Dictionary of English
Paul Procter, Editor-in-Chief, xviii + 1773pp., Cambridge University Press, 1995.
It is important to note that Paul Procter, in his Foreword, describes this dictionary as “designed for the foreign learner of English in any part of the world”; thus, it should not be judged on the same terms as are other monolingual dictionaries of like size, “100,000 words and phrases defined,… under 50,000 headwords.” To put the extent of the work into perspective, the average “college” (or “desk”) dictionary, like the Random House Webster, Webster New World, American Heritage, and Collins English dictionaries, contain about 175,000 entries, which translates into approximately 85-90,000 headwords.
Paul Procter, after working as Chief Defining Editor on the Collins English Dictionary, pioneered, in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English [LDOCE], in the preparation of dictionaries with controlled defining vocabularies. In the case of this work [CIDE], a limit of 2000. The true import of that claim merits examination, and we shall turn to that shortly.
First, a quick thumb-through of the text reveals a neat layout, punctuated here and there by catalogue-or “Dunden”-type illustrations (as at containers, cooking, coverings, and scores of other entries), vignetted collections of nonlexical information (e.g., PORTUGUESE FALSE FRIENDS, PRONUNCIATION OF WORDS WITH -OUGH, NATIONS AND NATIONALITIES, salutations and closing of business letters, HOMOPHONES AND HOMOGRAPHS, separate items on the marks of punctuation, grammatical constructions, and numerous other miscellaneous matters often confined to grammars, style books, and other works). On each page, the lines are numbered (in fives) down the center gutter between the two columns, the purpose being to make it easier to find the references in the 30,000-strong Phrase Index (pp. 1708-71).
In passing, we cannot refrain from reiterating our perennial complaint about the typography of the newer dictionaries: although the body text is a paragon of clarity, the headwords are set in bold sans-serif type, which makes the characters of some words indistinguishable. Because centered dots are used to mark syllable breaks—a useful practice abandoned in an access of sheer stupidity by the editors of the Collins, this does not present problems except in monosyllabic words, like lilt, till, and ill. Also, the alphabetical order might prove a bit off-putting for some, for phrasal verbs are set flush left with a hanging indention (like headwords) immediately after the main verb: for instance, take, which has fifteen main entries of its own (for reasons we shall get to), is followed by headword-style entries for take after, take against, etc., through take up with; it is only then that one reaches the entry for takeaway. As with any reference book, its users must become familiar with its organization of information before being able to derive its benefits; still, this arrangement takes some getting used to.
In every larger dictionary, the entries for words like back, set, and take are especially complex. In the CIDE the effort has been made to simplify such entries in limiting the number of senses dealt with by writing a few definitions—fifteen, in the case of take—that are intended to encompass semantically the basic range of meanings the editors deem to be required by typical users of the dictionary. In each case, the selected meaning is illustrated by many contextual examples. Choosing a short example from the often lengthy array:
take obj CATCH /teIk/ υ [T] past simple took/ t\?\k/, past part taken /\?\/ to catch or get possession of · Rebels ambushed the train and took several prisoners. · Government forces expect to have taken the city by the end of the week. · In chess, if your opponent takes your queen you’re usually in trouble. · There was a report of a baby taken by a wolf. · The Liberals needed just 200 more votes to take the seat from Labour. · The terrorists took him prisoner. [+ obj + n] · The rebels have taken power. · The new director took (up) office (=started their job) in December.
In each case, a word or phrase that provides a synonym appears in a box, followed by the pronunciation(s), followed by a part-of-speech label, followed by a symbol in brackets keyed to grammatical information given in the forematter ([T] being the symbol for “transitive verb, which has an object”), the definition and a series of collocational examples. (The British practice using a politically correct plural pronoun of reference for a singular antecedent is followed, explaining their job in the last example; the awkwardness could have been spared by a change to directors.) Boldface type within an example (e.g., power) identifies words commonly found associated with the headword.
Fifteen is not a lot of senses for take: in the Ox-ford Thesaurus we listed twenty-seven senses for which there were viable synonyms before reaching the phrasal verb section; the phrasal verbs yielded another twenty-five common senses for which synonyms could be adduced. One might have expected even more thorough coverage in a general dictionary. Were space not a limitation, it would be interesting to study which senses have been omitted in the CIDE.
As can be seen from even this cursory description of only one short entry, the CIDE contains a great deal of information that might well prove useful to a learner of English. Those who are not familiar with this type of dictionary—that is, one that provides learners with grammatical, collocational, and idiomatic information far beyond what might be expected in an ordinary monolingual dictionary— should familiarize themselves with the well-known precedent, the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Contemporary English, by A.S. Hornby, long a classic in the field. It is that dictionary (and the LDOCE), chiefly, with which the CIDE was designed to compete.
The attempt to cover British, American, and Australian English in a single work creates occasional problems. I am not enamored of the treatments of lift and elevator, for instance, where the former is defined as “a box-like device which moves up and down, carrying people or goods from one floor of a building to another or raising and lowering people underground in a mine,” and the latter as “a piece of equipment which moves things from one level to another · (Am) An elevator (Br and Aus) lift is a small room which carries people or goods up and down in tall buildings. & An elevator can be a moving strip which can be used for unloading goods from a ship, putting bags onto an aircraft, moving grain into a store etc.” If they are the same, why are they defined differently? And isn’t that “moving strip” more properly “A conveyer (belt) is a continuous moving strip or surface that is used for transporting a load of objects from one place to another”? (And the preferred spelling in British and American English is conveyor.) One would have expected the same treatment seen for boot/trunk and bonnet/hood. But matters get more complicated when British lexicographers assume that American English pavement means “the surface of a road if it has been specially put there, esp. if made from concrete or tarmac.” That is better than the treatment in Questions of English (see the review elsewhere in this issue), but it ignores the fact that the word is used in AE to describe any paved surface: when an American says, “I remember nothing after my head hit the pavement,” the site of the paved surface could be a road, sidewalk, or any other paved area. Also, AE uses washing powder or liquid and soap powder as well as laundry detergent. Either a poor choice of American editor was made or, as is often the case, the British editors didn’t believe what they were told.
Of great interest is the defining vocabulary, which is said to be limited to 2000 words. These are listed in the back matter (pp. 1702-07), where it is revealed just which senses of the forms are used in the definitions. Here we find, for example, that back, presumably “one word,” is used in four senses: ‘return,’ ‘farther away,’ ‘farthest part,’ and ‘body, part’; take is listed with five: ‘act,’ ‘accept,’ ‘hold,’ ‘move,’ and ‘need.’ As there are more than 4400 items in the list, one must assume that only forms are counted among the 2000, that is, take is counted only once, although its polysemy yields a semantic distribution of five. One might object that the figure of 2000 is just so much puffery, but it must be conceded that defining 100,000 words and phrases using a vocabulary of even only 4400 is no mean feat.
Those who accept the rationale behind teaching foreigners to learn English using a restricted vocabulary should be delighted with this dictionary, especially with the many ancillary features it offers.
Laurence Urdang
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Questions of English
Comp. and ed. by Jeremy Marshall and Fred McDonald, (Oxford University Press, 1994), 192pp.
A dozen years ago, the Oxford dictionary department launched The Oxford Word and Language Service [OWLS], devoted to answering queries about all aspects of the English language. Inevitably, a large percentage of questions received could have been answered by referring to a dictionary, even a relatively modest work. But some have dealt with subtler matters, and, in some cases, questions relating to details of the language not readily derivable even from the massive OED, in either of its editions.
In this book, the editors have occasionally undertaken to answer questions that have not been asked specifically but might reasonably be anticipated, like, “What is the difference between American and British English?” As they acknowledge, the subject is huge, not encompassable within the six or so pages given over to it here; the main areas are touched upon—pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary, and a bit on grammer—which is all one might expect in a brief work. Still, it would have been wise to have consulted a (knowledgeable) native speaker of American English before setting forth the misinformation about some differences in vocabulary. For instance, adrenalin is also the common term in AE (not epinephrine), though the latter is known; BE bath can be tub in AE but is usually bathtub; an AE cookie is a BE sweet biscuit, but biscuit is a common alternative term in AE for a dry cracker (Remember Uneeda Biscuits? They are crackers.); Americans bring up their children, as the British do, but they also raise or rear them; AE has both curtains and drapes, but they are different things: BE uses curtains for what AE speakers call drapes; AE has both deck chair and beach chair, not, as implied, the latter instead of the former; likewise, AE has dressing gown as well as robe and bathrobe, but a dressing gown is more likely to be somewhat fancier; Americans know many games of solitaire, of which patience is just one; both crayfish and crawfish are used in AE, and it is about time that the old (British) fiction that Americans say railroad for what the British call a railway was put to rest: for at least two generations, one of the biggest companies in the US was called Railway Express. Other fables are perpetuated, to wit:
BRITISH AMERICAN COMMENT
a quarter to a quarter of five AE has both
five
a quarter past a quarter after AE has both
five five
apart from aside from AE has both
at school in school AE has both
behind (in) back of AE has both
different different than See note 1
from or to
have got have See note 2
have not got do not have See note 2
I have just I just ate AE has both
eaten
in the street on the street AE has both
teach ‘be a teach school AE has both
teacher’
up to and through AE has both
including
(have a) wash up See note 3
wash, get
washed
Notes: 1. The preferred form in AE is different from, the alternative is different than; in BE, the preferred form is also different from, but the alternative is dif ferent to.
2. In both AE, and BE, these appear as contractions. The forms I’ve got money and I’ve got no money (or I haven’t got any money) are far more common in AE than I have money and either I have no money or I don’t have money, though I believe that AE speakers might detect a difference in emphasis: I have money is more likely to be said after someone else has said I haven’t any money, I’ve not got any money, or I don’t have (any) money when confronted with having to pay for something, as in That’s okay, I have money.
3. AE speakers are less likely to say, I’m going to have a wash; but they certainly do say I’m going to wash up (before dinner).
The problem with the way these distinction have been presented is that the BE speaker might be unlikely to use the forms listed under AMERICAN, but what is implied, incorrectly, is that the AE speaker does not use those listed under BRITISH, which is incorrect.
The information provided in response to real questions is less controversial. In some instances, the questioner might have been better served by being referred to another source. For instance, those who are curious about collective nouns (like gaggle of geese, pride of lions) are referred to Ruth Rendell’s An Unkindness of Ravens and James Lipton’s An Exaltation of Larks, but no mention is made of Ivan G. Speakes’s Dictionary of Collective Nouns, Gale Research Company, 1975, which is not only the most comprehensive work on the subject but provides citations, as well. And it might be worth noting in answer to the query about flammable/inflammable that inflammable is no longer legal on labels in the US because of the ambiguity.
Many people want to know if tomatoes, bananas, etc., are vegetables, fruits, plants, trees, herbs—or what. Yet there are some questions that are becoming almost universal: with the disappearance of telephone dials, do we enter, key, punch in, or (still) dial a number? It is also useful to have the longish note in response to a query about the universal applicability of “i before e except after c.” There are similar questions answered in the section entitled Curious and Interesting Facts, and the chapter called I’ve Made Up a Word contains some interesting material. But the replies given to some questions are not entirely satisfactory, as in the case of Why is there no separate plural for the names of many animals? Here, the answer should have touched on the fact that in some cases a plural like fishes, as distinct from the plural fish, sreves to identify the existence of a number of varieties.
In sum, this must be construed as a mixed review. Perhaps we are grumpier than usual because the two-volume Grammar of the English Language, by George O. Curme, Verbatim Books, (which is more comprehensive than A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, by Quirk, Greenbaum, et al.), and VERBATIM itself are omitted from the section called Suggestions for Further Reading. At least the Oxford Thesaurus is included.
Laurence Urdang
ANTIPODEAN ENGLISH: Probably, possibly, perhaps
W.S. Ramson, Clovelly, N.S.W.
Why is it that the closer in time one gets to the putative earliest use of a word the more tantalizingly obscure its connections become? Take jackeroo, for instance, the name given to a young Englishman of independent means who came out to Australia to gain ‘colonial experience’ by working in a supernumerary capacity on a sheep or cattle station, who enrolled in the nineteenth-century equivalent of a senior management course, either genuinely to learn self-reliance or gracefully to take himself off his family’s hands. In this sense it dates from the 1870s, and, of the several conjectural etymologies, those that link it with the Spanish vaquero or the English Jacky Raw seem at least possible. But then an earlier life was revealed: from the 1840s, and in Queensland especially, jackeroo had been used of a white man who lived beyond the bounds of close settlement and had taken on some of the not so savoury connotations of ‘frontiersman.’ The possible model of kangaroo suggested an Aboriginal origin, and, in the 1890s, one of the more indefatigable recorders of the Aboriginal languages, Charles Meston, came up with an etymology that fitted the chronology— and the geography—perfectly. He suggested that it was a transferred use of the Queensland Aboriginal word for a particularly noisy bird and that the connection was made by percipient Aborigines who applied it first to the German missionaries of 1838, having noted their garrulousness. From the specific to a general application was but a logical and consequent step. This rather pleasing etymology stood for a while but was discredited when R.M.W. Dixon failed to find an etymon in a Queensland language, despite a brave attempt to locate the origin in a putative Jagara word which was glossed as ‘wandering white man.’ And so we were back to square one and one of the more colorful words in Australian English had to suffer the indignity of having an uncertain origin.'
Wowser is another case in point. And again the history has thrown up more than the odd red herring. This time a prominent journalist claimed the word as his own invention, and the lack of any evidence to the contrary meant that the claim rested unchallenged. The editor of the Sydney Truth during the period 1895-1906, John Norton was one of those dynamic ‘one man bands’ who not infrequently seemed to have written whole issues on his own and who was certainly very influential in determining the style by which Truth came to be known. One of the features of this style was the alliterating, punning phrase, often used as a headline—‘wasted wowsers’ vied with ‘watery wowsers’ and indeed with ‘weird and worried wowsers,’ and the exercise was often carried to extremes—witness collocations like ‘pious, Puritanical, pragmatical, pulpit-pounding self-pursuers whom we call wowsers,’ or ‘bald-headed, bad-breathed, bible-banging bummer, who ought to be banged with a bowser.’ And certainly he overworked the word in the sense it has now of ‘one who is publically censorious of the behavior of others.’
But there was an earlier sense in that, for as little time as a decade, it has been shown to have been used in Australia, still as a pejorative term but with much less definition, more as a label for ‘someone who is in some way disruptive of social mores, a public nuisance whose field of activity was left open.’ The word was clearly felt to be a low word and there remains the possibility that Norton’s role was more that of a promoter than of an inventor, that there was an existing word, probably a regional dialect word, that he brought to the surface and to which he gave a new currency. Rather like the more recent scungy which, after years of use in Scots and Irish for a ‘sly or vicious person, a sponger,’ suddenly found itself in vogue as a word connoting the general sordidness of modern youth. In the case of wowser there is the tantalizing possibility that a conjectural use of the word occurs in 1879 in just the sort of context that would fit this theory and make its subterranean existance a reality: but all we have to go on is w—s, and not many lexicographers would chance their arm on that! [For the quotation see the Australian National Dictionary [AND], whose editor had a bit both ways.]
Like scungy, and possibly wowser, is spoof, a slang word for ‘semen,’ which turns up in a WWI context and then goes underground for the best part of 60 years. And perhaps this happened also to molo, meaning ‘drink,’ although the evidence is shaky to say the least [see AND again]. And bottler ‘something or someone that excites admiration,’ earliest recorded in 1855 in a quotation which carries the gloss ‘as the saying is’ and then not again for 20 years.
This raises in my mind bonzer [bonza, bonser, or bonsa] which first makes its appearance with the gloss ‘that bulwark of Austral Slanguage,’ or its synonyms boshter and bosker, all three of which are first recorded in 1903 or 1904. Or snodger, another synonym, which had 60 years of vigorous life and then left as it had come, without a trace. Or cobber, a now obsolescent word for a ‘friend,’ or digger, which began as a term for a ‘goldminer,’ then inexplicably became a term for an ‘Australian or New Zealand soldier’ in WWI and is now similarly obsolescent, even in the abbreviated term of address dig.
Who was Larry in ‘happy as Larry’ or Hughie in ‘send her down, Hughie’ [an invocation to the rain god]? Why is a ‘brothel’ called Timothy? Why is a ‘tropical storm’ in the north and west called a cock-eyed bob? How does the game of two-up come to be referred to in its earliest citation as the “national game”? Will we ever be able to say with confidence “probably,” or even “possibly,” or “perhaps”?
EPISTOLA {Mrs. Maughan S. Mason}
David Galef in his article “Sound and Sense” [XXI, 2], says that the childish exclamation Peeyoo! probably stems from a distorted rendering of Phew! Where I grew up the expression phew was one of relief: “Phew! I passed the test”; Peeyoo! was an exclamation of disgust upon smelling a bad smell.
Years later I read that the expression comes from the first two letters of Puteoli (Pozzuoli), near Naples, whose refineries produced such a stench in ancient times that seamen entering the Bay of Naples could smell the town long before they set eyes on it. This, of course, may be purely apocryphal.
[Mrs. Maughan S. Mason, Saratoga, California]
EPISTOLA {Robert J. Powers}
You write, in your review of the Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names [XXI, 3, 18], “It seems that in the southeastern US words beginning with shr- are pronounced as if spelled sr-, something I never knew.”
Reading these words I first thought “neither did I,” but further thinking conjured up the longdormant memory of a woman, originally from northwest Alabama, who invariably pronounced shrimp as “srimp,” the only person I have heard do so. She lived in, and had no difficulty pronouncing, Shreveport. Nor do any of the natives, among whom I (obviously) circulate regularly. The worst any of the local dialects can do is to render it as “SHREE-pot,” although the occasional ancient will come up with “SHREE’S-port.”
[Robert J. Powers, Col., USAF (Ret.), Shreveport, Louisiana]
EPISTOLA {Lester K. Arquette}
Enrique Lerdau’s letter on shuttle rhymes [EPISTOLAE, XX,3] led me to try my hand at concocting a few. Here are some samples:
A castle’s moat its border flanks
who enters in must ford her banks.
Her escort was a banker tall
He took her to a tanker ball.
In winter baby’s frolic cost
A whopping bout with colic frost.
The tigers kept on running straight
Twas truly at a stunning rate.
If dogs and cats you tickle, friend,
You may begin a fickle trend.
I don’t think that seating matters
when involved with meeting satyrs.
When that actress deems to sigh
Then it is she seems to die.
With naughty pranks a tricker sighs
But cries aloud with sicker tries.
Dave’s leather sling the tallest smites
But David wears the smallest tights.
If fans will help her find her man
She certainly will mind her fan.
The steep hill’s slope inclined her walk
And made it tough to wind her clock.
Barefoot she’d never cope with sandals
While she burned her soap with candles.
She’d rather raise a stein with Dan
Than venture out and dine with Stan.
But then when Stan aligned her kite
She saw him in a kinder light.
Pope Sixtus' chapel’s pristine since
That pope he was the Sistine prince.
It was his cross to cope with pain
As slowly limped the Pope with cane.
The little pig she would not kill
The piglet’s death she could not will.
So with her truck she raced her pig
The pig in turn he paced her rig.
I close with a shuttle rhyme which is about writing things like shuttle rhymes:
It’s hard to keep a running pace
In this stupid punning race.
[Lester K. Arquette, Ann Arbor]
EPISTOLA {David G. DiCola}
As a Rhode Islander, I naturally paid particular attention to Mr. Champlin’s article, “Language at Bay” [XXI,3]. It might be of some interest to readers that even in such a small state all but one of the words and expressions he cited are unknown to me (as well as to most urban Rhode Islanders) even though I was born and raised in Rhode Island. Mr. Champlin was writing about Yankee fishermen and the like who were a world away from the city with its varied population. (Yankee in Rhode Island refers to ‘descendants of the English who came here before the “immigrants.” ‘)
The one word I recognized is quahogs. However, the pronunciation he cited, “KOEhogs,” is not common in the city. While there is a lot of variation, the word is generally pronounced “KAWhawgs.” A final point is Mr. Champlin’s reference to Washington County. Rhode Islanders, except lawyers, refer to the County by its nickname “South County.” There is even a hospital with the latter name.
[David G. DiCola, Providence, Rhode Island]
EPISTOLA {Brian McConnell}
As another former reporter, I was surprised to read from one of your correspondents [Martin Wald, XXI,3] that The Associated Press Stylebook advised reporters to “Use innocent, in describing a defendant’s plea or a jury’s verdict, to guard against the word not being dropped inadvertently” from “Not Guilty.” Innocent does not mean ‘not guilty’ and I was always taught to write “Guilty (repeat Guilty)” or “Not Guilty (repeat Not Guilty).”
The difference between the two terms was best illustrated in the 1886 Old Bailey trial of Adelaide Bartlett, charged with murdering her husband by chloroform poisoning. The foreman of the jury, asked if they had agreed upon their verdict replied, “We have well considered the evidence, and, although we think grave suspicion is attached to the prisoner, we do not think there is sufficient evidence to show how or by whom the chloroform was administered.” She was found Not Guilty. Sir James Paget, sergeant-surgeon to Queen Victoria, was then publicly quoted as saying, “Now it is all over, she should tell us how she did it.”
[Brian McConnell, Dulwich Village, London]
EPISTOLA {John Robson}
Recently there came into my possession a photocopy of an article “What Gall” that appeared in VERBATIM [XVI, 3; by Joe Queenan]. It concerned the shocking case of M. Lucien Maître-Crèche, a Parisian copywriter sentenced to eight years in prison for using the imperfect subjunctive case of a prohibited verb, jumbo frankfurter, in a series of ads posted in the Paris Metro. Specifically he received his sentence for causing to appear in print the sentence “Que j’eusse bien aimé jumbo frankfurter aujourd’hui.”
I have of course no sympathy for M. Maître-Crèche. As Calvin Coolidge once advised that those who do not share the American dream ought not to settle in America, and as in Singapore one does not vandalize cars, so in France one does not use convenient expressions. C’est la vie, one might say, and those who disapprove are free to leave.
However, if M. Maître-Crèche is to serve eight years, the judges must get life, or even death. For what M. Maître-Crèche used was not the imperfect subjunctive of the verb jumbo frankfurter but of the verb aimer. Aimer then serves, in the imperfect subjunctive, as the auxiliary verb and is followed by jumbo frankfurter, which is of course an infinitive.
Who, indeed, shall guard the guardians?
[John Robson, Vancouver]
EPISTOLA {Jim M. Pols}
I was intrigued by William Dougherty’s comment [XXI,2] on Martyn Ecott’s article “The Franglais Blues” [XX,3]. I appreciate a Frenchman’s disappointment when he sees English gradually taking the place of French as an international language. But perhaps the francophone purist does not know how lucky he is. In the early decades of this century Frech was still the lingua franca of educated people. These people took great care to use the language, which they had acquired at great trouble, expense and personal inconvenience, with care. But whereas learning French required a disciplined mind, anyone with a vocabulary of a few hundred words can make himself understood in English. Partly due to the influence of cinema and television, many of these new English speakers are not aware of the differences among English, American, and Australian. They will use any English-sounding words and only half-understood English phrases indiscriminately. A favorite is using the present participle as a noun (parking ‘any parking facility’; dancing dancing hall; camping ‘camp site’; planning ‘budget or plan of action’; mailing ‘batch of junk mail’; living ‘living room’). These phrases are used in many European languages. These new English speakers do not hesitate to inflect borrowed English words as if they owned them. (French shooter, shootais, shooté; Dutch remainderen, remainderd, geremainderd, a trouser.)
I am afraid that, if what many citizens of the European Community either hope or fear comes true, and English becomes the second language in every country of the Community, there is a good chance that many of these hybrids (shopper for ‘supermarket trolley,’ processimulator for ‘simulator,’ and compacdiscontainer) will eventually find their way into the English as she is spoke.
[Jim M. Pols, Weymouth, Dorset]
EPISTOLA {Stanley Maso}
Enrique Lerdau gives examples of German Schuttelreime [XX,3] but finds them refractory in English. As an Englishman long addicated to spoonerisms and living in German-speaking parts, I have inevitably succumbed to the spell of the Schuttelreim. Most of my productions have naturally been in German (as when spring skiing in rapidly melting snow became Skifahren zwischen den Viehscharen), but since Enrique Lerdau is chiefly interested in English specimens, here are a couple of those I have recorded:
You just can’t wear your boater, mike,
When riding on your motor bike.
Or a little more ambitious:
On his dutiful bay
He rode away,
Needless to say
On a beautiful day.
Admittedly, I never expected such fugitive elucubrations to see the light!
[Stanley Mason, Effretikon, Switzerland]
EPISTOLA {Milton Horowitz}
In your review of The New York Public Library Writers Guide to Style and Usage [XXI, 2], you mention looking in vain for “wisdom” regarding the use of the serial (or “series,” as I’ve always called it) comma. One has no problem finding that wisdom in The Chicago Manual of Style, as you undoubtedly know. In fact, you would have no difficulty finding the series comma used at any college or professional division editing department at any major New York publisher. As a long-time employee and now associate of New York publishers, I can assure you of that fact.
In an “On Language” column (April 26, 1993), William Safire called for “doing away with the serial comma to save a projected 12 billion commas” nationwide. I wrote to him then and thereafter, giving examples from the Times of reading comprehension impeded by lack of the comma. I mentioned also the potential saving by Times writers by doing away with such hyphens as the one in teen-ager, which the Times insists on using.
In a gem of a “little” book called The New Well-Tempered Sentence, by K.E. Gordon (Ticknor & Fields, 1993), the author writes that in a series of three or more elements, “… a comma comes before the conjunction—unless you’re a journalist.” (emphasis is mine). Why is this so?
[Milton Horowitz, Jackson Heights, New York]
EPISTOLA {Mary Imber}
As a nonspecialist, simply a lover of words, an amateur precisianist and a crossword addict—alas, I find yours too easy—I am spurred to take issue with Tony Day [XX,4,21] on the subject of rhyming slang. My only credentials are that I am a native-born Londoner now in my mid-sixties and have lived all my life until now in London, including a number of years in the East End. Even now, here in Clerkenwell, five minutes’ walk from the northern edge of the Square Mile, I am less than a mile from Hackney. I have, willy-nilly, frequently been nudged into the use of such slang simply in order not to stick out like a sore thumb among others using it.
First, perhaps, we ought to establish what is the East End: roughly, it covers Hackney, Stepney (now known as Tower Hamlets), the Isle of Dogs, and parts of Bow and Poplar. Post-war slum clearance and rehousing broke up the old Jewish communities, and these have been replaced by subsequent waves of immigrants. Hackney now has many Cypriots and even more West Indians; and Stepney houses an enormous number of Pakistanis and other Asians. None of these groups has contributed to rhyming slang. There are therefore no neologisms in rhyming slang and it is definitely moribund. Non-English readers should take very much cum grano salis Mr. Day’s claim that Finsbury Park is ‘just down the road” from Mile End: it is a crow’s-flight distance of 4½ miles away and consequently probably nearly twice that by road, given the nature of London’s roads and its density of housing.
Most of the expressions cited are totally unfamiliar to me, and I suggest that Mr. Day has played with a rhyming dictionary and dreamed many of them up for himself—harmless enough, but he ought not to pass them off as being in common usage. Of those that are known to me, I would point out that even his usage of them is not what one would meet in everyday conversation with East Enders. Potatoes in the Mould certainly clarifies the words used, but we would expect to see, even in print, Talers in the Mould; and in speech we would always say, Isn’t it taters today when discussing the temperature.
It has always, since long before my time, been the custome for only the first part of a compound to be used, such as my old china (=china plate=mate) or up the apples (=apples and pears=stairs), and it is generally believed that this practice first began among the semi-criminal classes to render their speech less easily comprehensible to outsiders. This may or may not be so, but the habit has persisted.
Mr. Day might once have lived in London, but so have millions of others, and it doesn’t necessarily make Londoners of them, nor does it give them more than a passing knowledge of our native speech. I thoroughly enjoy VERBATIM and have always tended to regard articles published therein as reasonably authoritative; but I shall take the liberty in the future to doubt the “experts.” As far as I am concerned, Mr. Day’s article is a load of marbles (=marble balls=balls)!
[Mary Imber, London]
[Mary Imber went on to chide the Editor for a number of typographical errors—literals in English English—(e.g., “Ford Maddox Ford” for “… Madox …”) for which only apologies, no excuses, are offered.—Editor]
OBITER DICTA: I May Not Have Gotten This Right
J.A. Davidson, Victoria, British Columbia
One of the joys of retirement is the freedom to indulge in utterly inconsequential little endeavors. Recently I have joyfully spent at least two hours in intense research into the word gotten. It is not a word I use, but I recently heard a Canadian broadcaster use it, and that has set me to delving and grubbing in dictionaries and other reference books. And here is some of what I have got, or gotten, out of my research.
I have not conducted any kind of survey on this, but I can report that I have rarely been aware of gotten in written Canadian English, in conversation, or on radio and television. But, then, I haven’t really being paying attention to such things.
The verb get has two distinct variants between British and American uses as a past participle. American English generally prefers gotten, whereas English English is ordinarily content with simple got. And the Brits tend to use have got as meaning to ‘have acquired’ or to ‘possess’ or even to ‘own,’ whereas in American usage that is considered somewhat informal in speech and not generally used in writing.
Although gotten seems to have disappeared from English English except in some dialectical forms, it is still used in forgotten and begotten. But the word is very much alive in American usage. In The American Language, Mencken has seven references to gotten, which he says is “now” (1945) almost absolete in England. And he contends that “gotten is one of the hallmarks of American speech.” Margaret Nicholson, in her 1957 book, A Dictionary of American-English Usage (based on Fowler), pointed out that “Gotten still holds its ground in American English,” and she adds that “there is a popular superstition that got is less ‘refined’ than gotten.”
The Concise Oxford defines gotten simply as “US past part. of GET.” That seems the position in all Oxford dictionaries. The Collins English Dictionary takes the same position. A third British dictionary, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1987 edition) points out that the word is standard in American English, but “is not used in British English.” Chambers 20th Century has gotten as “arch. Scot. and U.S.”
In the only two dictionaries which can be taken as essentially Canadian and not simply British and American ones that have been slightly jigged up a little for Canadian editions, Gage Canadian (which grew out an American dictionary but was thoroughly Canadianized) and The Penguin Canadian Dictionary list gotten, simply taking it for granted and not worrying about whether or not is American or British.
Basil Cottle, a British scholar, in his book, The Plight of English (1975) [reviewed III,3], says that he likes gotten and feels that it is an improvement on mere got which he says is a “nasty verb.”
Gotten was standard English as late as 1820, but, somehow, came to be abandoned. James Orchard Halliwell’s Dictionary of Archaic Words (1850) gives GOTTED as a form of gotten.
OBITER DICTA: A Billingsgate in Kerala
O. Abootty, Kerala, India
Etymology of English words is really interesting. So many people in bygone days, both famous and infamous, have enriched English vocabulary through their names. When you use boycott, bowdlerize or bloomers, you must remember that these words owe their origins to the persons who lived in the past under the names Charles Cunningham Boycott (1832-97), Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825) and Mrs. Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-94) respectively. Besides these persons-words, commonly known as “eponymous words,” there are also place-words, commonly known as “toponymic words,” which derive from place-names. When you use calico, magnesium or hamburger, you must remember that these words owe their origins to the places under the names Calicut (a district and famous city in Kerala State, India), Magnesia (a metal-bearing region in Greece), and Hamburg (a city in Germany), respectively.
Years back a toponymic word—billingsgate— caught my attention, because it had something to do with my native place, Kannur City. Today billingsgate is used to mean “foul and abusive language”:
The Chinese themselves have not yet got around to denouncing Kosygin and company by name; but that will come soon, no doubt, since the Albanians are already publishing billingsgate attacks on “the Brezhnev-Kosygin-Mikoyan trokia.”
Billingsgate, a former fish market in London, was known for the abusive language heard there. The fish-wives and their fishmongering husbands got a reputation for their lusty and lurid eloquence of speech. Thus Billingsgate became so notorious that in 1652 it became a common word in English. Today we use billingsgate to mean any kind of profane and abusive talk or language.
There is a conspicuous connection between billingsgate and my native place. I am a native of Kannur City, a thickly-populated Muslim area in Kannur Municipality, Kannur District, Kerala State. Outside Kerala, Kannur is known as Cannanore. Kannur City is no longer a city. In bygone days, it was a major business center in Kannur District. Now Kannur Town, lying about 3 km away from Kannur City, enjoys this status. Formerly, there was a fish and meat market in the heart of Kannur City, now known as City Center. The language heard there at that time was just like that heard at Billingsgate. So Kannur City got a reputation for her bad language.
Although the 17th-century Billingsgate no longer exists, Kannur City still does. Today Kannur City has changed a lot. In the heart of the city one can now see businesses, barber shops, restaurants, ice-cream parlors, medical shops, etc. Today’s residents of Kannur City are educated and cultured. There are several educational institutes, including two Malayalam medium high schools and one English medium school, charitable institutions, and public libraries. Notwithstanding the tremendous changes, Kannur City still retains the bad reputation that she got ages ago. Even today one still hears the old chestnut:
“Excuse me, how do I get to Kannur City, please?”
“Get on No. 10 bus and get off where you hear people say ‘sonofabitch!’ ”
Alas, Kannur City is still haunted by that old bad reputation that she is the Billingsgate of Kerala.
OBITER DICTA: “Impossible!”
Allison Whitehead, Rainham, Essex
It is a pity the English language does not come equipped with a user’s guide, for this would surely put an end to the numerous “impossible” clangers made in everyday speech.
Good examples are sentences like those your parents used to scream at the tops of their voices when you were an angelic four-year-old: “If you fall out of that tree and break your legs, don’t come running to me!” They are also called Irish bulls.
Perhaps this explains why, as adults, we still say impossible things: we surely heard enough of them when we were young and impressionable. “Look at your face!” was another classic retort that greeted you even when there wasn’t a mirror to hand, along with: “Can’t you see how dirty the back of your neck is?” or “What’s that on your back?”
Answer that one truthfully and you’d have got a clip round the ear for your honesty—otherwise known as sarcasm until you’re an adult.
And what about, “If you don’t eat your greens, you’ll sit there until you do eat them!”?
All such orders were no doubt meant in good faith—even though they were impossible to obey— yet they did make their mark. We still encounter similar impossibilities with amusing regularity in our adult lives, along with their exact opposites—signs which more than state the obvious, such as “Ears pierced while you wait.”
As some people might say, “If Shakespeare were alive today he’d turn in his grave.”
OBITER DICTA: Permutations
Charles Lewis, London
Take three factors: pronunciation (P), spelling (S), meaning (M).
Take two variables: same (S) and different (D). Permute them, apply them to words and give examples of each category.
(1) PS, SD, MD. homophones: creak/creek; plain/ plane, bow/bough, tear/tare, tear/tier, roe/row, allowed/aloud, etc.; triplets: bawd/bored/board, sword/sawed/soared, cite/sight/sight; quadruplets: write/right/rite/wright, or/oar/awe/ore—a quintuplet if you allow Aw as in US expression “Aw gee!”
(2) PS, SS MD. usually called homographs: quarry, row, well, quail, down, truck, cleave, let, list. Note that the word(s) should be etymologically distinct, not merely have different meanings, so fast ‘quick/ firm’ does not qualify.
(3) PD, SS, MD. called heteronyms: row, bow, tear, entrance, wound, wind, dove. Note that the words should be etymologically distinct, so refuse, minute, contract do not qualify.
(4) PS, SD, MS. variant spellings: center/centre, enquire/inquire, -ise/-ize. (Flower/flour used to qualify, but should probably now be put in category 1.)
(5) PD, SD, MS. synonyms: neigh/whinny, allow/ permit, change/alter, transform/metamorphose, or to a word that has two accepted spellings which are somewhat different in pronunciation, as negotiate/ negociate, dived/dove, wold/weald, strap/strop.
(6) PD, SS, MS. variant (dialectal) pronunciations: controversy, exquisite, with variant stress; path with long or short vowel; often with or without the t sounded; garage.
(7) PS, SS, MS. This category is simply the same word (included here only for completeness).
(8) PD, SD, MD. This applies simply to two completely different words (included here only for completeness).
OBITER DICTA: Spoonerism
Anna S. Bickel, St. Augustine, Florida
Two guests were arriving late for a party being held at our home in rural Pennsylvania. Coming into the room full of friends, Bill Harris announced “Hey, I’m really not late, look,” he shoved up his sleeve to show them his wrist watch and then, in surprise he shouted, “Oh, damn, I’ve broken my crotch whistle.”
VERBUM SAP: Me and Empathy
Robertson Cochrane, Toronto
My morning newspaper has a feature called the “Facts & Arguments Page,” wherein articles are normally fairly factual and tenably argumentative. A glaring recent exception was a misguided missive that railed against the perceived (by the author) rising popularity of empathy at the expense of good old fashioned sympathy. It was not entirely clear whether the article was meant to be philosophical or philological. But since it meandered erratically and erroneously for more than half of its length through the realm of semantics, I of course took both an interest and umbrage.
The article’s was meant thesis seemed to be that we should not attempt to empathize with others—that is, really to try to feel their experiences and share their burdens. To claim to do so, it was argued, is an invasion of privacy and “an insupportable claim.” The most we can or should do when confronted or affected by someone’s wretchedness is sympathize, or commiserate.
Exhibit A was a story about a rich American lawyer who, according to the writer, claimed “her Native American clients love and respect her because she empathizes with them. When I suggested that such empathy was unlikely given that, at the end of the day, she climbs into an air-conditioned BMW and drives back to her Malibu mansion while her clients return to stinking penury, I was told that she could empathize because her grandparents’ cousins died in Auschwitz.” This, it was argued,“is the most common, and the most outrageous, of empathic claims.” It is most certainly outrageous. It is also incredible. And it left unexplained how anything can be at the same time the most common and the most outrageous, the latter strongly suggesting something quite outside the usual. This was the least of my quibbles.
The article began by stating there is a Gresham’s Law of Language in which bad words drive out good. Oh, really? The 16th-century financier Thomas Gresham was talking about money, not language. The word phenomenon is called pejoration, or degeneration, and it usually involves a change of meaning, rarely the disappearance of a word. But the article’s illustration of this assertion is even more fallacious. Because of the “search for false importance,” it alleges, the “useful old English words burgle and burglar have led by inflation [may be this was, after all, an economics essay] to the unnecessary verb burglarize.” The fact is that burgle and burglarize saw the light of day at about the same time, 1870-71, and it is the useful old burgle, not burglarize that has been disparaged by usage critics, many of whom have argued that rob could have served for all of them.
While sympathy is the “most important word to have been murdered in the late 20th century,” we were also given the sad, so-called facts surrounding the “recent” demise of discrimination and disinterested. “Discrimination,” we read, “was the first to go in modern times.” Fact: the word was already taking on prejudicial overtones a century and a half ago. On March 27, 1866, U.S. President Andrew Johnson said, “Thus a perfect equality of the white and colored races is attempted to be fixed by federal law in every state of the union over the vast field of State jurisdiction covered by these enumerated rights. In no one of these can any State ever exercise any power of discrimination between the different races.” This pejorative sense has been used regularly ever since, but it has not succeeded in driving out the “discerning” sense of discriminating.
“Disinterested went next,” the eulogy continued, “becoming a posh synonym for uninterested, because we no longer choose to believe that anyone can put aside their own interests to review a situation dispassionately.” Yet the author proceeded to give recent examples of disinterest (impartiality, fairness, dispassion, neutrality, unbiasedness) in action—proving that behavior can continue to exist unaltered even if our words for it change, and disproving the writer’s own contentions. Fact: Disinterested “went” a long time ago, and not in the direction deplored. When this word was first used in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, it meant ‘unconcerned, lacking interest, apathetic, uninterested’—the very senses it has been struggling to return to in this century, against great opposition. The sense of impartiality or an absence of self-interest did not develop until the middle of the 17th century, after which the original sense disappeared for about 200 years.
Why is it, as etymologist Walter Skeat asked frequently in the last century, that people will not hesitate to proffer publicly their guess-work on word origins and other language matters, when they would not similarly dare to “explain the ordinary facts of botany and chemistry”?
On the question of empathy versus sympathy, I am not competent to comment, except on their etymological and semantic distinctions. But I seem to recall reading, more than once, that people coping with various forms of distress do not want sympathy. Instead we are urged to “walk a mile in their shoes,” which I believe is a metaphor for empathy, or at least an understanding based on something more profound than arm’s-length pity. In any case, the writer seems to have based his case more on etymology than sociology. Empathy, he maintained, is a legitimate technical term, but only in psychotherapy and in the arts. And we were admonished that to claim empathy outside those two special areas is an “enormity”—a word he described as “another dead word,” but used anyway.
While we’re at it, why not outlaw all words and expressions we’ve purloined over the years from specialized fields—such as melancholy, hectic, chronic, and allergic (medicine); leading question, time is of the essence (law); by and large, high and dry, slush fund, round robin, aloof (sailing); ego, extrovert, complex, phobia, psyche, depression, trauma, subconscious (same place as empathy); and many more of what Fowler called “popularized technicalities.” But I doubt that will deter some legitimately interested, sympathetic, altruistic, caring people from trying to get inside other people’s heads and hearts, in order to share their pain. It may not be possible to do it, but I don’t see anything wrong in trying—no matter what word we use to describe the attempt.
OBITER DICTA: Full Thirkell
Just as speakers of British English are mistaken in their assumption that Americans never say railway but always railroad, Americans (and others) are mistaken if they believe that Briticisms are used by speakers in Great Britain to the exclusion of words used in, say, America. It is wrong to think that British speakers never say truck for lorry, escalator for moving stairway, and so forth. Not only do they know the words and phrases, to which they have been exposed through travel, tourists, movies, television, reading, and ordinary commerce—the properly descriptive word, intercourse, comes to mind only to be suppressed—but they use them, sometimes as free variants, sometimes with specialized meanings: there are some who might say that a truck is different from a lorry, but practice varies. In some instances, the British enjoy twitting Americans about some of their taboos. Certainly one of the—dare I say?—prominent examples is cock, which means both ‘male bird’ and ‘penis’ in both dialects; the “situation” arises because it meant ‘male bird’ more commonly in British English and ‘penis’ more commonly in American English, a fairly clear case of distribution. This gave rise to what Brits, who evidently had little to laugh at, thought was hilarious: roostertail for cocktail. One notes today, though, that American prudery might have had some effect in Britain, where one now encounters cockerel as often as cock in direct reference to ‘male bird.’ While at one time the sense of ‘penis’ was relatively far down the awareness scale of those who had occasion to refer to cocks (as ‘male birds’), its sense of ‘penis’ has increased in frequency and awareness level in recent years. Proof of this can be seen in a recent “Diary” article by Ruth Dudley Edwards [The Independent, 23 January 1995, p. 13] in which she quotes, with “inexpressible joy,” the following passage from Angela Thirkell’s The Brandons:
Mr. Grant, really quite glad of an excuse to dismount, offered his cock to Lydia, who immediately flung a leg over it, explaining that she had put on a frock with pleats on purpose, as she always felt sick if she rode sideways.
OBITER DICTA: Testefyin’
Purists who insist that the only proper meanings of words are their original, “etymological” senses should know, by that token, that women cannot testify or give testimony and that men cannot become hysterical.
Is it correct to describe rule by Houynhms as hippocracy?
“You’re obviously in denial.”
“No, I am not!”
OBITER DICTA: Maltese Cross to Bear
Representatives of the fifty-two nations that met in Budapest in December voted to change the name of their organization, the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, creating a new abbreviation, OSCE. According to Peter Walker, writing in the Independent on Sunday [1] December 1994, p. 12], OSCE “means something so extremely vulgar in the dialect of one of the members, Malta, that we are almost loth to print it.” Omit almost, for Walker does not reveal the meaning.
OBITER DICTA: Mysterious Orient
According to a Reuters dispatch from Peking [8 December 1994], “China’s 1.2 billion people are running out of names. In the northern port of Tianjin, more than 2,300 people are called Zhang Li and 2,100 are called Zhang Ying.” (Readers are reminded that in Chinese the family name comes first; thus there are 4,400 people with the family name Zhang.) Perhaps they can be recruited for membership in a Chinese chapter of the Jim Smith Society.
Anglo-American Crossword No. 70
Across
8. Eric’s toe is throbbing, it’s abstruse. (8)
9. Afterthoughts, not right about the herons! (6)
10. Arranged to go without gear to fill a hole. (4)
11. He has an important job to do on a bomber raid gone wrong. (10)
12. Dropsy check-up may produce a human soul. (6)
14. Did Grandfather “clock on” with this big container? (8)
15. Sort of object that doesn’t stand still. (7)
17. Number not used by a Cardinal in Holy Orders! (7)
20. Gain and lose together it can provide power. (8)
22. Wily Etruscan senior has left as he couldn’t control the waves. (6)
23. If you’re under this you’re bound to do something. (10)
24. This midge, if flying backwards, would have a strong flavor. (4)
25. It went to Bogart’s head. (6)
26. Chest, swelled with inspiration! (8)
Down
1. Hired killer found in under two horse-power! (8)
2. Climbing fruit that will paralyze! (4)
3. Boy who can sing three times as high. (6)
4. Very sentimental, it melts your heart, or in the pan. (7)
5. Old servant, found by Greta in error. (8)
6. Poor induct, poor show. (10)
7. Behead the rotters, they’re nothing but animals! (6)
13. This person believed in getting the correct type. (10)
16. Get to the right marina with this boat. (8)
18. Ruminant eaters have eaten another animal. (8)
19. Wanted His Lordship mentioned in the legal document. (7)
21. “Better lose your head to the walker!” (6)
22. Able to imitate a bit of toast. (6)
24. Kelly, controlling the character. (4)
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Although small, the Flint plant produces several million rivets of varying size each week.” [From an article by John Griffiths in The Financial Times, 30 November 1993. Submitted by Anon., Los Angeles.]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Refugee convoy carrying 900 creeps to safety.” [Headline in the Schenectady Daily Gazette, 30 December 1993. Submitted by Hugh N. Boroson, M.D., Gloversville, New York.]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Your subscription is about to expire, and delivery will stop. Please remit payment now to avoid uniterrupted delivery.” [From a renewal notice sent by The Courier-News, 9 June 1993. Submitted by Norman A. Heap, Stockton, New Jersey.]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“…Hosokawa finally explained on national television at 4 a.m. that Japan, an export superpower, must accept rice imports ‘for our sake and the world’s sake.’ ” [From The Sun, Gainesville, Florida, 14 December 1993. Submitted by Caroline Feiss, Seattle.]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“ ‘Cinderella’… Fairytale Heroiness.” [From an advertisement for Genna’s in the Detroit Free Press Magazine, 29 November 1992. Submitted by Betty E. Beach, Troy, Michigan.]