VOL XXII, No 3 [Winter, 1996]

Power Users Dump Baudy Language: The Ambivalent Nature of Computer Slang

David Isaacson, Western Michigan University

What happens when power users dump baudy language? Should they abort, retry, ignore, or admit failure? They might boot up again, but they could experience a head crash. Would Kermit prevent them from being munged? What should a poor technoweenie do when threatened by thrashing between disk and memory? Nerdettes better hope their motherboards are user-friendly. If all else fails, they could hit the DWIM key.

Hackers, or just plain droupies, probably have no trouble translating what I just wrote out of computer jargon and slang into more conventional English. But even if you do not understand the preceding, you probably feel the tension between words conveying force, strength, and menace, such as power users, abort, dump, head crash, and munged, with words suggesting vulnerability, frailty, and humor as a defense against such powerlessness, in words like technoweenie, nerdettes, user-friendly, and DWIM (for ‘do what I mean,’ a mythological key that would make the computer do what you cannot figure out yourself).

Most people who use computers feel ambivalent about them. It should not, therefore, be surprising that computer slang conveys divided, and sometimes radically conflicting feelings. As a librarian I see evidence every day of this ambivalence in the slang used by patrons and colleagues. Slang is a reliable gauge of attitudes because it is usually used in an unguarded way to express unedited feelings.

I am using the word slang as it is defined on page xi in the latest scholarly dictionary of American slang, J.E. Lighter’s Random House Dictionary of American Slang, Volume I, A-G (1994): “an informal, nonsubstandard, nontechnical vocabulary composed chiefly of novel-sounding synonyms for standard words and phrases.” I am assuming, as the editor of this dictionary argues, that slang is not just colloquial language, but that it is often aggressively informal, that it doesn’t tolerate pretense, that it is often crude, blunt, ribald, egalitarian—in short, very unpretentious and honest language. [ibid, xii] Computer slang is similar to, but rather different from computer jargon, which is the specialized language used by “tekkies.” Jargon is the “in” language used by any profession, group, or class. The word default is jargon for ‘something automatically carried out unless you change it.’ This term does not qualify as slang because it is a legitimate, formal term, rather easy to define denotatively, quite fit for use in polite company, and equally at home in written and spoken language. By contrast, the neologism droupie ‘a person who likes to spend time in the company of programmers and data processing professionals,’ is slang because it is very informal language. In fact, it is so casual as to suggest an anti-grown-up rebelliousness because of its probable derivation from the word groupie, and it is definitely more frequent in speech than in writing.

Because slang is “up front” and sometimes deliberately “in your face” language, we can learn more about how people really feel about computers by examining slang rather than jargon. A good way to remember the difference between slang and jargon is that jargon “serves to indicate a referent, usually with great precision, while slang characterizes and often makes light of what is referred to, and nonslang synonyms are almost always readily available. Technical language develops among specialists for the purpose of cooperation; slang develops among associates for purposes of expressiveness, companionability and to some extent exclusivity.” [ibid. xvi-xvii]

We can learn a lot about what is on people’s minds when we analyze jargon, but we can learn how they feel when we analyze slang. Thus, it is not surprising that a great deal of computer jargon is a quick way to say otherwise complicated things. For example, MIPS is a convenient acronym for millions of instructions per second, point and click is a quick and direct way of describing basic mouse techniques, and run-around, borrowed from typesetting, is an apt metaphor for the way text flows around the outside edges of a graphic image. Jargon like this is very good at precisely describing actions and things, but these words do not convey any obvious attitudes about their referents.

My analysis of computer slang has revealed a great deal of ambivalence about these often mysterious and seemingly omnipotent machines. Some computer slang suggests a love-fear conflict. One does not have to be a Freudian to wonder about the double message implied in some of these terms.

On the one hand, there are quite a number of words and phrases suggesting that computers are powerful and frightening. We definitely want to do all we can to avoid causing a computer to bomb or crash. It is true that many computer applications began in the military but many people who are not conscious of the military associations use expressions like command language or launch a program. Because computers simulate many human activities, it is not surprising that we should attribute all kinds of human characteristics to them. They do seem to possess “artificial intelligence”; some of them create “virtual reality”; and they are so efficient that they make us wonder about why we would want to do anything in “real time” any more. When I am feeling especially organized at work I like to tell coworkers that I’m in the “batch mode.” Computers are so seemingly lifelike that we worry when they catch viruses; we seek to debug programs; and we do not have to be right-to-lifers to worry if a computer application is suddenly aborted. Our fears are often suggested when we say that some repetitious human activity looks as if it is programmed. We sometimes want to deprogram people who belong to dogmatic cults.

As if to counteract or reduce the frightening power suggested by many of these words, other slang expressions suggest that computers are really quite harmless. Some of these terms go to the opposite extreme, suggesting a warm and fuzzy, childlike relationship that seems all too naively trusting, as if Little Red Riding Hood really could trust the wolf dressed as her grandmother. Surely we must expect that the normal state of affairs is for computers to be hostile, or at least unfriendly. Why else would we so frequently use the term user-friendly to describe operations that are not easy to do? And how did such a cold and unhuman thing like a telecommunications protocol for transferring files between a mainframe and a microcomputer get dubbed Kermit? It seems incongruous that a character on a children’s television show should be identified with such an impersonal thing. At Western Michigan University two names for areas within our mainframe are Piglet and Winnie, suggesting that all the hard, serious data and big-time university research is really not daunting at all. On the contrary, that world is as blithe and carefree as the Winnie the Pooh stories. Similar words for computer services at my university are grog, gumby, roo, tigger, kanga, ninny, thumper, mickey and minnie (for Mickey and Minnie Mouse), and Laurel and Hardy. Surely the people who coined these names are of the same mindset as those who call miniature programs applets or refer to diagonal or circular lines in a text as jaggies. Reference librarians who regularly contribute to the “Stumpers” list on the Internet refer to themselves as wombats. This apparently originated because one of the reference questions involved these Australian marsupials, noted for their burrowing qualities. Surely the nickname has stuck not only because of the metaphorical associations with librarians burrowing for answers, but also because the name sounds cute, personalizing what otherwise might seem to be the overly mechanical activity of finding answers to reference questions. So many people use their pets' names for passwords that these are among the first names a decoder would try to learn.

I want to suggest that there is a very understandable reason for the apparent conflict between words like power user and Kermit. The soft, warm, children’s words allow us to allay our fears about computers that crash and bomb and abort. It is as if the cute words undemonized the scary ones. I do not have to be a hacker or a tekkie in order to manage efficiently my user-friendly computer, In one version of reality, those ubiquitous computers are going to take over all aspects of life, doing away with my job or changing it into something a robot should do, rather than a human being. Another version of reality offends bureaucrats and is just as exaggerated, but it is very useful as a defense mechanism. In this view of the world, I can feel very safe indeed—in fact, I am more than simply safe—I am nurtured in the warm and cuddly child’s world of fun things like floppy disks, where I can cozy up to my motherboard, and pretend that I am a Dogcow (a trademark symbol of Apple Computer) for a character that can say words like “Moof” when it is asked to list Laser-Writer options. Fortunately, the real world of computers, notwithstanding slang words to the contrary, exists somewhere between the opposing fantasies of the cold impersonality of Brave New World and the carefree innocence of Winnie the Pooh.

[NOTE: In this article, I have consulted The Computer Glossary: the Complete Illustrated Desk Reference, by Alan Freedman, (American Management Association, 6th ed., 1993), and computer dictionaries: Jargon: An Informal Dictionary of Computer Terms, by Robin Williams (Peachpit Press, 1993); Prentice Hall’s Illustrated Dictionary of Computing, by Jonar C. Nader (Prentice Hall, 1992); and Webster’s New World Dictionary of Computer Terms, by Donald Spencer (Prentice Hall, 1992).]

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“During this, the ‘Year of Arts in Education’ in Connecticut, budget cutbacks have reeked havoc with many school arts programs.” [From “From the Station Manager,” by John F. Berky, in Applause, Connecticut Public Radio Newsletter, August/September 1991. Submitted by Edwin A. Rosenberg, Danbury, Connecticut.]

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“A middle-aged muslim man looking for a muslim woman—object, matrimoney.” [From The [Toronto] Globe and Mail, 3 August 1991. Submitted by Alec McEwen, Calgary.]

From China to Peru: An Oriental Odyssey

Adrian Room, Stamford, Lincolnshire

Where have you been on your travels lately? They say Bali is her best in the spring, but you may prefer somewhere warmer, such as Yadian. Myself, I can’t wait to visit Eluosi again, although all roads traditionally lead to Luoma, even if you are travelling from as far as Meizhou. They are the Chinese names for, respectively, Paris, Athens, Russia, Rome, and America.

Where in the world are these places, you may wonder. Maybe in China? Well, yes and no. They are Chinese transliterations of those names, rather than translations, and strictly speaking in the Romanization system known as Pinyin should be written with tone signs and without capitals, since Chinese has pictographs, not letters as we understand them. They would then appear as bālī, y˘di˘n, éluósī, luóm˘, and měizhōu.

Chinese names of places in China itself are of course actually meaningful, although many have become distorted by Westerners. The capital, Peking, now familiar to most in the West in its more accurate form, Beijing, has a name meaning ‘northern capital,’ by contrast with Nanking, ‘southern capital.’ Canton, or as it now appears on modern maps, Guangzhou, means ‘broad region,’ while Shanghai means ‘over the sea.’

The Chinese names of neighbouring places in the Far East are also often similarly meaningful and may be translated from their language of origin. Thus gu\symbol\ngd\symbol\o means ‘broad island’ and translates the Japanese name of Hiroshima, while d¯ngjīng, meaning ‘eastern capital,’ translates the Japanese original of Tokyo. Japan itself is riběn, literally ‘sun root.’ (Hence its Western byname, “Land of the Rising Sun.”) The Pacific Ocean is tàipíngyáng ‘peaceful ocean.’ The Chinese name of China itself is zhōngguó ‘middle country,’ while the Western name is traditionally associated with that of the Ts’in dynasty (221-206 BC), although actually recorded much earlier. (The character for middle, a rectangular figure bisected by a vertical line, represents a square target pierced by an arrow.)

Places further from China may also sometimes have their names translated, assuming they are already meaningful. Thus Port-au-Prince, capital of Haiti, is tàiz\isymbol\găng, literally ‘great son port,’ but Haiti itself is hăidi, clearly a transliteration. However, it so happens that this name is actually (though coincidentally) both meaningful and appropriate, since it translates as ‘sea land.’

Such serendipity sends one on a voyage of discovery, to see what meanings can be aptly found in other Chinese transliterated names. The transliterations themselves, as instanced above, may at first seem strange. However, once one appreciates certain conventions, the forms of the names fall into shape. The Chinese do not distinguish l from r in Western words or names, for example, so that these letters when transliterated may appear as either. Hence luómă for ‘Rome’ and bālí for ‘Paris,’ but l\isymbol\sīběn for ‘Lisbon,’ and lúndùn for ‘London.’ Similarly, initial b or p can give Chinese m, so that ‘Peru’ (with Western r as well) is milŭ and ‘Bangkok’ màngŭ. The Chinese r itself is closer to Western sh [\?\] or zh [3]. Hence ruìdiăn for ‘Sweden’ and rìnèiwă for ‘Geneva.’ Generally, too, Chinese does not have consonant groups or words ending in a vowel (except the nasal -ng [η] as in běijīng). This means that vowels appear in transliterations where one does not expect them. ‘Baghdad’ is therefore bāgédá. The transliteration itself is often from the native form of the name. ‘Spain’ is thus xībānyá, from España, ‘Germany’ is déyìzhì, from Deutschland.

Not all names produce a fortuitous literal meaning as apt as that for Haiti. But ‘America,’ as měizhōu, has a name that happens to mean ‘beautiful continent’—America the Beautiful, after all—while ‘England’ is yīngguó, ‘brave country.’ (“This England never did, nor never shall, Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,” as the Bard penned.) Even Paris seems to have a historic reference, since bālí literally means ‘clayball multitude’: the Roman name of Paris, Lutetia, comes from Gaulish luto ‘mud, clay.’

In the names of America and England the second element is not part of the transliteration but the Chinese word for, respectively, ‘continent’ and ‘country.’ Other continents also have names that are part transliteration, part zhōu: ‘Europe’ is oūzhōu, ‘Asia,’ yāzhōu, and ‘Africa’ fēizhōu. The second and third of these have names that could literally be interpreted, hardly flatteringly, as ‘inferior continent’ and ‘wrong continent,’ but the first element of Europe’s name has no corresponding sense.

There are some curiosities. The Chinese name of ‘Iceland’ is bīngdăo. This is clearly not a transliteration but a translation: it literally means ‘ice island,’ with the second element apparently mistranslating the Icelandic name for the country, Īsland ‘ice land’ as ‘island.’ Nearer home, the Chinese name for ‘Korea’ is cháoxiän. This literally means ‘seatide fresh,’ not inappropriately, but is actually a transliteration of Korean chosön, which means ‘land of the morning.’ The Chinese name for the ‘Atlantic Ocean,’ on the other hand, is quite different: dàxīyáng ‘great western ocean.’

It has to be said that if one attempts a literal translation of many Chinese placenames one simply ends up with a sense that is surreal rather than suitable. Many cannot be meaningfully translated at all. Of those that yield some sense, the following handful may be considered poetic coincidences:

Athens yădiăn ‘proper law’

Chile zhìlì ‘wisdom benefit’

Delhi dél\isynbol\ ‘virtue hometown’

France făguó ‘method country’

Ganges hénghé ‘everlasting river’

The Hague hăiyá ‘sea tooth’

London lúndùn ‘matching honest’

New York niŭyuē ‘bond agreement’

Thailand tàiguó ‘peaceful country’

Japanese Pop Group Nomenclature

Paul Blackford, Bangkok

The names that Japanese pop groups adopt would, at first glance, appear to be as vacuous and bland as the worst of the western pop their managers/producers/arrangers plagiarize and instruct/ command them to play. Not for them the teen British and American angst, rebellion and outrage expressed by such band names as The Sex Pistols, The Nipple Erectors, The Slits (all-girl, ho ho Hemingway), The Dead Kennedys, The Butthole Surfers, Kid Kommode and the Bidet Boys, Pogue Mahone (now knows as The Pogues since being dropped from the BBC’s playlist because some scholar told the BBC that pogue mahone meant ‘kiss my arse’ in Irish), and so on. What is interesting about some of these purveyors of Japanese pap—I mean pop—is how their names appear on CD, cassette, and other labels and in the Japanese pop press.

For this to be appreciated I must first briefly describe the complex Japanese system of writing. It consists of borrowed Chinese ideograms (characters known as kanji, the hiragana syllabary used for Japanese words not covered by kanji, the katakana syllabary used for foreign words, and the Roman alphabet known as romanji usually used for abbreviations like UN and acronyms like GATT. You can see the whole consort effortlessly dancing together on the front page of any Japanese newspaper. In the case of the names of their pop groups, this concatenation, however, assumes truly awesome and bizarre proportions, surely unknown, indeed not even possible, in any other language.

• Meaningless names written in romanji: B’z (pronounced “bees”), Lindberg, Qlair (pronounced “kler”), SAYE·S, SMAP, T-Bolan (probably from the late British pop star Marc Bolan and his ‘70’s group T.Rex), trf (pronounced “truf”), Zard.

• English names written in romanji: a (always glossed in parentheses as ‘alpha’), Access, CoCo, Damn Rockers, Dreams Come True, Escalators Vanilla (possibly inspired by the ‘60’s American bands Vanilla Fudge, The Mood Elevators, and Strawberry Alarm Clock, though made ludicrous in conforming to Japanese grammar which requires the adjective to follow the noun), Hound Dog, Jigger’s Son (four guys), Judy and Mary (three guys backing a girl singer), Princess, Tube, Wink, Zoo.

• Japanese name written in romanji: Mi-ke (a winsome, snaggle-toothed teen warbler. Mi-ke is a popular name for pets, particularly cats).

• English names written in katakana: The Dark Ducks, J-League Downtown (J-League is a soccer league), Physical, Cruising, Omnibus, Original Love, The Peanuts (twin sisters), Southern All-Stars, The Tempters, Tokyo Performance Doll (seven girls), Tulip, Tunnels (pronounced “toenails”), Zutorobi (“The Beatles” pronounced backwards, syllabically rather than alphabetically! The Seltaeb? Nah!).

• Partly Japanese and partly Western name written in romanji: Bakufu Slump (literally, ‘blast,’ as in explosion, ‘slump.’ Slump is a loanword used in baseball and economics).

• Partly Japanese and partly Western name written in kanji and romanji: Comé Comé Club (literally, ‘rice rice club’).

• Pure Japanese name written in khanji and romanji: Hikaru GENJI (The kanji component, hikaru, means ‘light (as illumination)'; GENJI, always capitalized, seems to be a literary allusion to Lady Shikumi Murasaki’s c. A.D. 1000 novel The Tale of Genji, Genji being the male protagonist.)

• Pure Japanese name written in kanji: Otokogumi (‘Warriors’ Group’)

• Pure Japanese name written in kanji and hiragana: Kaguya-hime (literally, ‘Princess Sparkle,’ from a classic Japanese nursery tale.)

From all this we can clearly deduce that in no way can the Japanese be accused of xenophobia— linguistic, anyway! Indeed, L’Académie française might do well to note the above and the albeit absurd names of these two Japanese discos rendered in romanji: Maharaja Saloon Sahara King & Queen Disco Maebashi, and Maharaja Tokushima Space Disco Liberazione.

Casanova’s English

Simon Nicholls, Hertford

Some years ago I worked as an English teacher in a school not far from Italy’s Adriatic Riviera, which is flooded with tourists in the summer. Not surprisingly, some of my students came along primarily to acquire a smattering of spoken English to help them chat up holidaying women. For such men, the somewhat tedious rules of English spelling were of scant interest, “I lav you, Pleas com and leave whit me in my aus” was typical of the kind of “useful phrase” that they might jot down in their notebooks. This devil-may-care attitude to the quaint rules of English spelling follows firmly in the illustrious footsteps (or perhaps penstrokes) of the greatest Latin lover of them all, Giacomo Casanova.

Born a Venetian, Casanova led a peripatetic life which took him through almost every country in Europe in search of fame, fortune, and female attractions. In his day French was the international language, spoken by anyone who aspired to a place in high society in any country, but during his brief visit to London in 1763-64 he made an attempt to pick up a smattering of English. In his autobiography, written thirty years later, he proudly demonstrates his knowledge, casually throwing English words into the middle of his French text with an easy confidence and some bizarre spelling.

He arrived in Dover in June 1763 in a “paq-bot” which he shared with the Duke of “Bedfort.” His eighteen-hour coach journey took him through “Cantorberi” before reaching London, where he called on a former lover of his who now lived in “Soho Squarre.” She did not give him a particularly warm reception, however, and he was soon on the lookout for a house to rent for himself. With the help of an English-speaking friend, he examined the columns of the “Advertisser” and quickly found the ideal bachelor pad—a house in “Pale-Male”—which he moved into at once, making sure that the “Auskeper” would take on a French-speaking maidservant.

He was keen to get to know the city and his friends in London society soon showed him the sights. Being the son of an actor and actress, he was naturally interested in the theaters, such as those at “Covengarde,” “Drurilaine,” and “Hai-marcket.” Casanova was also a fervent card player and was soon invited to play a few “robers” of “visk” (or “wisk”). Not being accustomed to that particularly English form of cards, he lost fifteen pounds in his first game to “Lady Covendri.” He was also not entirely familiar with English money and mistakenly paid her fifteen guineas, thus leaving Lady Coventry smiling at her unexpected gain of a further fifteen “scheling” (or was it “shelin,” “seling,” or even “chelin”?).

Casanova enjoyed London. He lived near such attractions as “Grim-pare” and the new royal residence of “Bukingan Aus.” A brief stroll up “WiteAle” took him towards “Chirincras.” He could enjoy lunch at the “Staren-taverne” in “Pique-Dille” with his good friend “Milord Pimbrock” [Pembroke], where the “water” might offer him a plate of traditional English “Rochebif” and a mug of “Strombir.” Afterwards they might venture out to the “Boulingrin” or, if he needed ready money quickly, to pawn some possessions at the “Pingbros.” He could also admire Wren’s splendid new church of “St. Pol” and the wonderfully efficient “Penni-post” which delivered letters around the capital.

Casanova was a highly intelligent man and a competent linguist. Much of his prodigious literary output, including his 3,000-page autobiography, was written in French, which was a foreign language to him. So why was his written English so haphazard? Part of the answer lies in the “spell-as-you-like” nature of our language at a time when Johnson’s dictionary was still a novelty, though while some of his variant spellings of shilling, for example, are typical of the English of the day, much of Casanova’s spelling would look more at home in a Chaucerian text than one from the Age of Englishtenment. Besides, he did not write his life story till thirty years after his visit to England, with no more than his memory to rely on when writing a language he had spoken but, very likely, not written before. But most important of all is that the situation did not worry him. He loved to communicate and was happy to charge headlong at the language and have a go regardless of the risk of mistakes—an attitude which many people today might do well to learn from.

Maybe it would bring a smile to Casanova’s lips to know that even now, although the world and the relative importance of the English language have changed so much, those of his countrymen who style themselves as his heirs retain his enthusiastic disregard for English spelling. As he would doubtless have observed in his perfectly idiomatic English, “Plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose.”

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“Our Hopes For The New Year Are Soaring!” [From an advertisement for The Swan Funeral Homes, in the Pictorial Gazette East, 29 December 1990. Submitted by Mary D. Dirks.]

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“There isn’t room to list them all, except it must be noted that they included the Right to Die Society apologizing for accidentally calling itself the Right to Life Society in a previous letter, and the Right to Life Society objecting to the theft of its name.” [From The Toronto Star, 6 February 1993. Submitted by Elisabeth M. Day, Oakville, Ontario.]

Safire’s Syndrome

John H. Felts, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

William Safire, the political and language columnist for the New York Times, has been concerned about the correct use of the apostrophe and s with proper nouns ending in s, particularly with eponyms, so concerned that he has named a syndrome for himself: Safire’s syndrome—‘the urge to correct.’ His compulsion emerged when both President and Mrs. Bush were diagnosed as having Graves’s disease, one of several eponyms for hyperthyroidism, a common condition caused by excessive secretion of thyroid hormone.

Which leads to the use of medical eponyms, proper names, usually of persons or places, to designate diseases; their signs and symptoms, alone or in combination; reflexes, and a host of other medical phenomena. Dorland’s Medical Dictionary, 26th edition (1974), devotes more than nineteen columns to short definitions of diseases, the vast majority eponymous, seven named for physicians who early described hyperthyroidism. Fortunately, only Graves’s name ends in s but his is the overwhelmingly favored eponym of English-speaking physicians. Dorland also listed 488 signs, again mostly eponymous, of different diseases, thirty-three in thyrotoxicosis. Twenty-five of the physicians commemorated were western Europeans or Americans active between 1860 and 1920, years of intensive correlation of bedside and pathological findings, whose names now linger as historical markers.

But historical background offers little help in the management of Safire’s syndrome, because criteria for correct use of apostrophes and s’s for proper nouns ending in s are lacking. Fowler noted the problem favoring s’s but made no specific reference to the conversion of proper possessive nouns to adjectives; Strunk and White affirmed the propriety of s’s, and Gowers, in The Complete Plain Words, prefers s’s, a choice of some importance because his father, the British neurologist Sir William Richard Gowers (1845-1915), is remembered for his column, disease, fasciculus, sign, solution, syndrome, and tract by Dorland.

Critics may sensibly ask, “Who owns the eponym?” Some processes are named for early reporters, as is Graves, and some for victims as Lou Gehrig (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), usually without their permission or even awareness. Should the earliest reporter, the most accurate one or the one most widely known today be memorialized? One might look to modern medical journals for guidance but little is to be had. The Annals of Internal Medicine, organ of the American College of Physicians, abandoned the possessive form totally in 1988, protesting that eponyms are inappropriate when “a directly descriptive synonym” is available. Many medical journals, however, have declined to follow its lead and medical dictionaries are neither particularly helpful nor consistent. By 1988 the editors of Dorland’s 28th edition had deleted three eponymous entries for hyperthyroidism, retaining Graves but now as Graves disease, the second s and its possessive apostrophe banished. Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, 26th edition (1995), argues that Graves’ is correct, while the Churchill lexicon (1989) omits both apostrophe and s with Graves but keeps both with Parry’s disease, another eponym for hyperthyroidism.

Those who prescribe written usage offer no guide at all as to how to handle the problem posed by the spoken word. How can Dan Rather or Peter Jennings let his audience know when a celebrity suffers eponymously? The speaker, the scriptwriter, and their audience might have thought that President and Mrs. Bush were ill with “Grave” disease. And there is Bright’s disease, used by the public to identify chronic kidney disease of any cause which might be called Bright disease by some. And what of

Best’s disease—congenital macular degeneration of the eye

Gross’s disease—saccular dilatation of the anal wall with retained inspissated feces (What is a “directly descriptive synonym” for this process?)

His’s disease—trench fever

Little’s disease—spastic palsy (Little disease would pose a nice problem for the TV or radio announcer)

Tooth’s disease—progressive personeal muscular atrophy (usually compounded as Charcot-Marie-Tooth’s disease)?

Consider these without ’s

What if Prichard were asked to present his 1993 VERBATIM article, “Whatever Happened to Frank Beriberi?,” before an audience? He reported that the late, lamented Sidney J. Perelman confessed that “he had Parkinson’s disease” and Parkinson “had mine,” but Eisenberg, in Scientific American, asserted that Perelman said he had “Bright’s disease” and “he has mine” (James Parkinson, 1755-1824, described paralysis agitans and Richard Bright, 1789-1858, chronic glomerulonephritis). Poor Perelman ! Other sources, however, assert that Bright had Groucho Marx disease and that Groucho had his. Which then is correct, Marx, Marx, or Marx’s disease?

Safire’s problem, and mine, too, are avoided in the Linnaean nomenclature for biological classification in that the names of persons and places are latinized or otherwise altered, as

Salmonella typhi, the microbial cause of typhoid fever, recalls the American bacteriologist David Elmer Salmon (1850-1914)

Rickettsia rickettsia, or Rocky Mountain spotted fever, the American, Howard T. Ricketts (1871-1910)

Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the German A.L.S. Neisser (1855-1916).

Safire’s syndrome would have been of little concern in the 18th century, before eponyms became fashionable, and, according to Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, before the adjective possessive would modify case. There, possessive is defined as “having possession” and apostrophe as “In rhetoric, a diversion of speech to another person” or “In grammar, the contraction of a word; as, tho’, for though.” Use of the apostrophe to indicate possession or in combining short words, as, isn’t for is not, is not considered.

However, The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition (1993), does offer comfort and guidance to the perplexed, proclaiming that “Most proper nouns including most names ending in sibilants take ’s as in “Kansas’s, Burns’s poems, Marx’s theories, Berlioz’s opera, and Ross’s lane.” Among the exceptions are Jesus', Moses', and names of more than one syllable whose unaccented endings are pronounced “eez,” as in Euripides' or Xerxes'.

Safire’s syndrome is not limited to medicine. A recent “Wine Talk” in the New York Times tried to answer the question “Stags Leap, Stag’s Leap, Stags' Leap—Which of these spellings is correct in referring to the wines of a particular section of the Napa Valley in California?” The answer: “All of the above.” The advice to the consumer, “Just keep the apostrophes straight.” Just so.

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“There is not a finite number, I am sure, but it must be a large number.” [From a review by Laurence Urdang in Verbatim, Winter 1993, page 36. Submitted by Harlan Spore, North Little Rock.]

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“Lingerie manufacturer works with University Extension to improve bottom line.” [Subheadline in Exclaimer (published by University of Missouri System, Lincoln University), December 1992. Submitted by Terry R. Brock, Kansas City, Missouri.]

The Way That They Tell ‘em

Donald MacIntosh, Maldon, Essex

“Total absence of humor,” remarked Colette, “Renders life impossible.”

The lady was correct. Humor and the ability to express it have been a fundamental part of human life from the beginning. But, as sure as there are wines that do not travel well, so, too, is there a type of humor and a form of language that is best appreciated in the land of its origin. Or, to be more specific, in its region of origin.

My own country, Scotland, is a classic example. Scottish humor can be an acquired taste. It is so distinctly regional, and it is peculiar to its particular region as is the language through which it is expressed. Visitors to the region laugh, not so much at what is said, but at the way in which it is said. The listener laughs at the reconteur as much as at the story itself.

Listen to the lugubrious drollery of the western Highlander. His stories are long and involved, and they are best heard when you have lots of time on your hands. The Highlander is a consummate storyteller. Whether he is relating one in his native Gaelic or in the lilting English that he learned at school, you can almost hear the sough of the sea on far-off, never-to-be-seen-again Hebridean machairs as he speaks. There is an innocent humor to be found in his stories, to be sure, but they are stories that are invariably tinged with a brooding sort of sadness. You are glad that you listened, but you are left with a louring aura of melancholy around you long after you have taken your leave of him.

Over on the east coast the humor is sharp and incisive. It is a sardonic wit, a wit that can be as savage and biting as the dry northern winds that sear this land for a goodly part of the year. It has much of the pawky vulgarity of the Glasgow wit, but it is different somehow, much more personal. It is wit between friend and friend. On the other hand, listening to the banter between gaggles of Glaswegians at, say, their Barras market on any morning of the year is like listening to the discordant yakking of jackdaws around derelict tenement chimneys in the nesting season.

Far away from all those, down at the southernmost tip of Scotland, both humour and dialect have a decidedly Irish flavor. With the green glens of Antrim just a short hop across the water, this might not, on the face of it, seem so surprising. But there is more to it than that. Wigtownshire (as the county was called until the Whitehall bureaucrats dropped the ancient name in 1975 and decreed that it be merged with Dumfries and Galloway) has been relucant host to many incomers. The earlier inhabitants, the shy Mesolithic tribes and the mysterious Picts, vanished for ever into the moorland mists before the invaders. With them, they took their language.

The Roman came and went, leaving not so much as a place name behind him. Indeed, had not his Latin been adopted by the scholastic monks of the day, little would have remained to show that he had ever been there in the first place. “VENI, VIDI, VICI,” he crowed smugly. “And then,” as a historian friend of mine so succinctly put it, “He just buggered off.”

The Celt brought religion and the Gaelic. In fact, the eccelesiastic Ninian brought Christianity here long before Columba reached Iona in AD 563. Unlike the Roman, the Celt left his mark in the many place names of Gaelic origin scattered around southern Scotland to this day. Stranraer, the largest town in Wigtownshire, is one such. Its name means, literally, ‘fat peninsula,’ from the Gaelic sròn reamhar.

Gaelic was the mother tongue in Wigtownshire for twelve centuries, but little trace of it remains in the spoken language today. It was the pervasive Anglo-Saxon who really set the foundation for the dialect spoken by the modern descendants of Wigtown Man.

But it was with nearby Ulster that the inhabitants had the greatest affinity. Indeed, to this day they call themselves, and their dialect, “Galloway-Irish.” It is as good a name as any. Although it is English that they speak, you would hardly think so when you first hear them in full flow. It is a lingo that has little in common with either the slow, precise enunciation of the Highlander or the clipped phraseology of Sir Noël Coward. It is a thick macedoine of Broad Scots and Ulster English, and it has a harsh and uncompromising rasp to it, especially if you don’t understand a word that is being said to you—which, it might be added, is quite often the case if you are a newcomer to that part of the world. Simple phrases like “I wish to dismantle it” become Ah’m gaan tae tak’ it sinnery, and even simpler words like foolish become glaikit, so that by the end of your first day you are desperately searching for strong drink and the services of a good interpreter.

The “Galloway-Irish” are a people of humor. There can, admittedly, be a bitterly Schadenfreude quality to some of it, for theirs is a hard life. But, more often than not, it is the “Irish” that surfaces. Occasionally—and particularly for those not accustomed to the dialect—their pronunciation of certain words can lead to embarrassing misunderstandings, as the following tale from my youth may illustrate:

Aul' Wullie was a smallholder. His only interest in life was his farm, and he labored long and hard among the stones and the whins to wrest a living of sorts from the reluctant soil. It was a way of life that would have crippled many a lesser man, but Wullie was a tough old bird: when the day of his hundredth birthday dawned he was still maintaining a keen interest in the daily affairs of his little place.

The old man would have been content to allow the occasion of his centenary to pass unremarked, but his family had other ideas. They arranged a mighty soiree for the great day, and they invited a reporter from the county newspaper to be there to interview him. The reporter—a demurely austere product of colonial missionary parents—was on her first assignment and she was, in fact, completely new to this area.

Wullie seemed preoccupied and the interview was not going well. In desperation, she asked him if there was anything she could do to make his day complete. A spark of life glimmered at last in the old man’s rheumy eyes.

“Aye,” he replied with sudden interest, “There is that, lassie. Ye cud gie me some sex.”

She recoiled in shock. When she had recovered somewhat, her messianic zeal got the better of her and she reminded him that, at his age, he should be more concerned with thoughts of the afterlife than with the prurient temptations of this one. She would probably have pursued this subject at some length had not the old man interrupted her.

“Mebbee ye’re richt, lassie,” he said, “But ah still need the sex. Ye see, ah’ve got foarty-fower hunnerwecht o' tatties oot there ahint the byre, an' ah’ve nae sex tae pit them in.”

It’s the way that they tell’em, as Mr. Frank Carson, the Irish comedian, would no doubt remark.

It is a peaceful place. There have been no battles on its soil since Roman times. Although many of its sons have died on foreign shores under the British banner, the land itself has slumbered undisturbed. A single bomb jettisoned by a fleeing German bomber during the 1939-45 war plopped into a remote bog, scaring the living daylights out of a nesting moorhen, but that was about all. The horrors of the London blitz belonged to another planet: things that were read about in newspapers but which were barely comprehended by the majority in this tranquil little backwater.

The Russians had entered Berlin and the European conflict was drawing to a close. I was standing in a Wigtownshire forest, eavesdropping on a conversation between two workers. They were cynics, as most old countrymen are, and neither could be convinced that the war just ending would be the war to end all wars. One of them, an old campaigner with the local Home Guard, was particularly eloquent.

“Jeest tak' heed o' whut ah tell ye, Erchie,” warned the sage, “They’ll be anither waar yit. An' whun it dis stert, ah wud wadjir ma wumman an' weans agin yours that it ‘ull be a faar waar waar th’n th’ last waar wur.”

Indeed it will. But the invader had better come prepared if he ventures beyond Hadrian’s Wall. He is in for a long, long haul in the wind and the rain and the sleet if he wishes to master the Galloway-Irish.

ANTIPODEAN ENGLISH: More Famous Australian Etymologies

Bill Ramson, Clovelly, N.S.W.

A little learning has always been a dangerous tool in the mind of the amateur etymologizer, and early acquaintance with one or more of the languages of the Australian Aborigines not infrequently proved seductive. Take that universally popular caged bird, the budgerigar, first encountered in the inland of New South Wales and known to the colonists from the 1840s. Its name was first written down as betcherrygah, that being a transliteration of the Yuwaalaraay word gijirrigaa (Yuwaalaraay being a language similar to the better-known Kamilaroi), but the temptation to “explain” the word had triumphed over the etymologizing process as early as 1848, when the spelling budgery garr was preferred, and the first element explained as meaning ‘in the black’s language—good or handsome.’ It is true enough that budgerry (or bujari as it is more correctly transcribed) in the Sydney language Dharuk meant ‘good.’ But in the Sydney language only, its familiarity to English ears being the result of its taking on in Australian pidgin as a term of approbation from as early as 1790. What more natural than that the White perception of a bird destined to become a plaything of the western world—as evidenced by another of its names, the lovebird—should become paramount. In Australia now the shortened form budgie is in more common use—but that is another story.

Another world that exercised the etymological imagination is billabong, which owes its currency outside Australia to the familiarity of the “national song,” Waltzing Matilda, of which it is a crucial part. Here again a word was broken down into two elements, billa ‘creek’ and bang or bung ‘dead,’ and little thought given to the fact of their independent origin. Billabong is first recorded in the 1830s in southeastern New South Wales as a name in the Wiradhuri language for a watercourse which flows after rain, and hence any backwater, blind creek, or anabranch left in the arm of a river, a pool which is left when the connecting stream dries up. It is not the source of billy, a Scottish dialect word for a milk pail, nor does it have anything to do with the Queensland Aboriginal word bung ‘dead,’ which passed into Australian pidgin in the 1840s and which developed by the 1880s the application ‘bankrupt,’ as in the bank’s gone bung. Tempting as this suggestion may be, it is geographically and chronologically impossible.

Yet another Aboriginal word, borak, was held by some to be the etymon of barrack, although the probability has to be that this is a British regional dialect word given a new lease of life in fresh circumstances. Borak was a negative in the Victorian language Wathawurung and was one of a comparatively small number of words which the Aboriginal languages collectively contributed to an on-the-whole short-lived Australian pidgin. Borak was borrowed in the late 1830s and, perhaps because the Dharuk negative baal was already in use, did not last long in its primary sense. But it almost simultaneously developed a secondary sense as a noun meaning ‘nonsense, rubbish,’ a synonym for the more frequently used gammon, a British cant word for ‘guile’ or ‘deceit’ that the convicts brought with them and which also moved in the direction of ‘nonsense’ or ‘humbug.’ Oddly, borak was coupled with the verb poke in the phrase to poke borak at, meaning ‘to deride,’ and this was close enough to the transitive use of the verb barrack ‘ridicule, jeer at, verbally abuse’ to suggest that the two might be connected. And, in the absence of a memory of its British use, the Aboriginal, being to hand, seemed to some a possible source.

Again, what needs to be taken into account is the balance of probabilities. It is unlikely that a borrowed word would undergo a significant change in form so quickly and, with hindsight, it is more likely that an impreciseness of meaning caused by unfamiliarity should attend the bringing into vogue of a word amongst those who did not have a dialect memory of it. So barrack, attested as a Northern Irish term for ‘bragging,’ shifts slightly but not contextually in meaning to the vociferous denigration of a sporting team or a participant in a fight, and admits the converse of this in the intransitive verb barrack for ‘support.’ And the less said the better about another conjectural etymology which would have it that this partisan practice began in Melbourne and characterized the behavior of the crowd at the police barracks end of the ground.

Such behavior was often associated with larrikins. And the etymology of this word has also been hotly disputed, even if mostly by the lunatic fringe. The golden rule has to be that, if there is a historically valid source, it is to be preferred unless the circumstantial evidence makes a mockery of it. In this case the presence of a high proportion of British regional dialect speakers amongst the convicts and settlers who emigrated or were transported to Australia argues incontrovertibly in favor of a dialect origin if a potential etymon can be shown to exist. One can, even if there is a perceptible difference between the benign OED definition “a mischievous or frolicsome youth” and the Australian “a young urban rough.” The circumstantial evidence provided by the historical dictionary’s quotations documents the shift, and there is no case for resorting to the fable that the word derives from the description of such youths “larking” about.

Some Secrets of English Nicknames

Ralph H. Emerson, South Glastonbury, Connecticut

Names are a tricky subject in English as in any language, but happily a very few facts go a long way towards explaining the origins of hundreds of English nicknames and family names. Many family names are patronymics, so called because they are based on the first name of some long-ago father. English patronymics fall into three common types: 1) the father’s name alone, John Will; 2) the father’s name plus possessive -s, John Williams or Wills, meaning, in effect, ‘William’s John’; and 3) the father’s name plus -son, John Williamson or Wilson. (Sometimes spelling disguises the clarity of these forms: for instance, Davis or Davies is really Davy’s and Dixon is Dick-son.) Not all patronymic-like names are based on a father’s name; they might also recall an employer, like John Lord, or a female relative, like John Jillian (from Juliana).

A patronymic can be based on a full name (William-s) or a nickname (Will-s). That is important because many familiar patronymics are based on otherwise obsolete nicknames, as we shall see. A lot of these ancient nicknames had cute diminutive suffixes. Only one of these remains productive today, the -y or -ie in Willy or Willie, but Middle English had several others at hand. Anglo-Saxon provided -kin, as in Will-kin and Tom-kin, whence Wilkins and Tompkins; and -cock, as in Will-cock, whence Wilcox. French provided -ot, as in Mary-ot and Philip-ot, whence the surnames Marriott and Philpott; and -in or -on, which could turn Mary to Marion, Alice to Alison, Dick to Dickon (whence Dickens), and Rob to Robin (whence Robbins and Robinson). All of these suffixes show up again and again in surnames, so they can be quickly recognized.

Harder to recognize are certain distortions imposed on the bodies of first names when they are clipped down to nicknames. Usually, to make a first name into a nickname we just pluck out the most prominent syllable, like Sue from Susan, and either leave it plain or make a diminutive out of it by adding -ie or -y: Susie or Suzy. Some names refuse one or both of these tricks (Laura makes only Laurie, not *Laur); but they are about the only ones left to us in Modern English. Middle English, however, had many other ways to play around with a first name to make new nicknames, including the seven patterns of consonant substitution discussed below. Many of the resulting forms remain current as nicknames (or indeed as names in their own right), others are preserved only in patronymics, and still others have vanished entirely. Listed below by consonant category are all the forms I have been able to find, regardless of their modern currency. Some of the stranger ones are from a list in Thomas Nugent’s New Pocket Dictionary of the French and English Languages (New York, 1834). Note that a few names fall into more than one category.

1) r becomes d or h. This affects just three names: Robert makes Dob or Hob, Roger makes Dodge or Hodge, and Richard makes Dick, Hick, or Hitch—though not *Ditch, apparently! This is the origin of the surnames Hobbes and Hopkins (i.e., Hobs and Hobkins), Dodge cars, and Alfred Hitchcock, among other things, including some famous sobriquets. Yokels, for example, are called hicks in America and hodges in England; and because workhorses once often sported the name Robert, we call a prototype horse Old Dobbin and our ancestors called rocking horses hobby horses. Pursuing a favorite pastime was known as riding one’s hobby horse, the origin of hobbies. There are also some similarlooking names that merit attention. Bob for Robert seems to have been created by phonological assimilation, the final b attracting an initial b, but Richard and Roger have no corresponding nicknames *Bick and *Bodgee. The surname Dodd is rooted in an obsolete first name, Dodda (though Dodson seems to be a variant of Dodgson). The Hud of Hudson was a nickname for both Richard and Hugh; another name rooted in Hugh is Hutchins, via the French diminutive Huchon.

2) r becomes l. Thus Dorothy to Dolly, Harold to Hal (and also Henry to Hal, via Harry), Mary to Mal or Molly, Peregrine to Pel, and Sarah to Sally. It is comforting to find that Dolley Madison was christened Dorothea, and perhaps not so comforting that Molly shows up also in gun molls ‘gangsters’ girlfriends.'

3) r vanishes. This was happening long before r- dropping became common in English accents: Barbara to Babs, Bartholomew to Bat, Bridget to Biddy, Christopher to Kit, Dorothy to Dot, Frances to Fanny, Harriet to Hat, Herbert to Hab or Hub, Jordan to Judd, Margaret to Maggie or Meg, Margery to Madge, Martha to Mattie, and Theresa to Tess.

4) I vanishes. Thus, Alice to Assy, Gilbert to Gib, Melissa to Misa, Philip to Phip or Pip, Walter to Wat—and perhaps Charles to Chaz, though I think that is just a joke pronunciation for the abbreviation Chas. As nicknames, most forms in this set are obsolete, and perhaps for good reason: I knew a Melissa who absolutely hated being called Missy. But Gib, Phip, and Wat survive in patronymics: Gibson, Gibbons, Gibbs; Phipps; Watson, Watkins, Watts. Electrical watts were named for the Scottish engineer James Watt, and readers will recall Wat Tyler’s Rebellion of 1381.

5) zero or h becomes n. Thus Abigail to Nab, Ambrose to Nam, Anne to Nan or Nancy, Edward to Ned, Eleanor or Helen to Nell, Humphrey to Nump, Isaac to Nykin, Isabel to Nib, Obadiah to Nobs, and Oliver to Noll. These nicknames originated as possessives, since Middle English words beginning with a vowel or silent h took the possessive mine instead of my; so instead of “my Anne,” people said “mine Anne,” which was reinterpreted as “my Nan,” just as the animal once called “an eft” or “an ewt” is now known as “a newt.” Two of these nicknames developed notorious associations: Oliver Cromwell was known as Iron Noll, and the children’s verses of Ambrose Philips ensured the everlasting fame of his nickname, Namby Pamby.

6) m becomes p. This applies to only four names: Margaret via Meg makes Peg, Margery via Madge makes Paige, Martha via Mattie makes Patty, and Mary via Mal or Molly makes Pal or Polly. All Pattys nowadays are probably Patricias, but Nugent did list Patty for Martha.

7) th becomes t. Thus Anthony to Tony, Arthur to Art, Bartholomew to Bart or Bat, Catherine to Kate or Cat or Kitty, Dorothy to Dot (and Dickens’s Little Dorrit), Elizabeth to Betty or Bet (whence Betsy and Bessie), Martha to Martie or Mattie, Matthew to Matt, Nathaniel to Nat or Nate, Theodore to Ted, Theresa to Tess or Tracy, and Thomas to Tom. In England before the 1600s, th in Hebrew and Classical words and names such as these was pronounced as plain t after the French fashion, as is still the case with Thomas: Tom and the other nicknames in this set are partly just phonetic spellings of the old sounds of the full names. Note that the old t-for-th sound survives also in Esther, Theresa, the river Thames, the British pronunciation of Anthony as “Antony,” and the name of the spice thyme, usually called “time.”

In the nicknames Babs and Nobs, the suffix -s is an old diminutive suffix like -y; in fact, a few nicknames apparently combine the two: Betsy, Patsy, and Nancy. The suffix still surfaces occasionally, as for England’s Prince William, known as Wills. (This is distinct from the patronymic -s of John Wills.) One last diminutive suffix is -o, a macho one for boys only—Tommo for Tommy. This has a modern ring, but it is older than it looks: in Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, from the late 1600s, I find Ralpho.

“Badges” Redux

Daniel Temianka, MD, Palos Verdes Estates, California

Everyone remembers the classic scence from Treasure of the Sierra Madre in which the banditos encounter that dark-minded prospector, Humphrey Bogart, in the rugged mountains of Mexico.

“I found a little dove in her nest, ha ha ha ha ha!,” reports a subordinate bandito (in Spanish) to his boss. “She was hidden.”

Bandito Number One, in the person of Alfonso Bedoya, calls out to Bogart, “Oiga Señor: We are the Federales. You know, the mounted police.” (He pronounces it “mohnted.”)

Bogart: “If you’re the police, where’re your badges?”

Bedoya’s smooth Mayan face contorts into a sneer, “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges.” And, shouting angrily, “I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!”

This brief soliloquy is notable in several respects. First and most obvious is its use of repetition, perhaps the simplest poetic device. And it might also be considered an example of pleonasm, ‘the use of more words than those necessary to denote mere sense; redundancy, or tautology.’

But most remarkable is that only the third sentence is grammatically correct. The first two are merely slang, but by the third Mr. Bedoya has become so enraged that he resorts to speaking correct English.

I submit that he does so because he knows he will thereby communicate more effectively. As Joseph Wood Crutch remarked, “Children were taught ‘standard English’ instead of that ‘acceptable to their peer group’ in order to facilitate communication between class and class, region and region, century and century. …” [his emphasis] In this instance, standard English serves to bridge the gap between bandito and gringo. (But lest we succumb to the modern fantasy that open and honest communication will solve all disputes, we must also recall that soon after Mr. Bedoya’s last assertion the shooting starts. Perhaps if he had displayed some badges, authentic or otherwise, he might have more easily achieved his objective.)

Furthermore, in speaking correct English, Mr. Bedoya also reveals his identity as a relatively learned man, undoubtedly a major reason that he is the jefe of his gang. Emotion will betray character every time, and education is power.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“All but a few employees—including one who confessed, and later hung himself in jail—were soon set free.” [From The New York Times, 15 September 1991. Submitted by John Salz, Ross, California.]

EPISTOLA {Robert J. Powers}

Inflation rears its head in the strangest places. Ruth Flanders’s “Foreign Treasures” [XXII, 1,21] includes “a face like 37 days of rain.” When I first undertook the study of German (Bronx High School of Science, 1939) the expression was ein Gesicht wie drei Tage Regenwetter haben.

[Robert J. Powers, Shreveport]

EPISTOLA {Lisa A. Nunlist}

Please be patient with Wellerisms and their collectors [XXI,3], as I was patient with my grandpa when he said that years ago his teacher told him to sit in the front of the class for the present; he waited and waited and she never gave it to him. Collecting lists of silliness is a legitimate pastime. I collect matchbooks and names that end in -ford. My collections are completely without academic merit but they amuse me. To compare the collectors of Wellerisms to brick-wall comedians is to overlook a generational, if not historical and unfortunate shift in humor. Men of my grandpa’s era and earlier were amused by the subtle, the slapstick, and the silly. Men of my generation and younger are amused by the sewer. Can you imagine the hard-edged rappers of today being tickled by the lyrics of Mairzy Doats? My dad’s earnest question, “do you walk to school or carry your lunch?” was so utterly lame, so naive, but such romps in the playgrounds of language are never tripe.

[Lisa A. Nunlist, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho]

EPISTOLA {Harold Mann}

Mr. Alan Major [XXI,3] can take comfort: arzey-garzeys is alive and well here, eight miles or so from Canterbury. I learned this when a neighbour stumbled on them and broke her leg.

[Harold Mann, Faversham, Kent]

EPISTOLA {Kurt Loeb}

In Pendleton Tompkins’s letter about vanity licence plates [XXII,1], he answers the dental question FUNEDK? with the words, “No, I have no decay.” I believe that William Steig of “CDC?” fame would have answered, “SIFDK.” Perhaps dentists are word lovers. At home I spotted this identifying plate: 2THMD.

[Kurt Loeb, Downsview, Ontario]

OBITER DICTA: What’s eating you?

Rosalind Woolner, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire

What’s eating you? If you are a member of the Mina ethnic group of West Africa it could be almost anything, even your own head, as the phrase for “I have a headache” in its literal translation means ‘My head is eating me.’ In Mina, a language spoken in Togo and parts of Benin and Ghana, the verb ‘to eat’ is used in many phrases that have nothing to do with food.

If a speaker of Mina is suffering he will say that he is ‘eating the wind,’ if he is comfortable he will say that he is ‘eating life,’ if someone lends him money he will say he has ‘eaten their credit.’ Birthdays, religious festivals, and anniversaries are also ‘eaten.’

Whereas it is easy to explain this by referring to the cultural importance of food in African societies, the same reasoning can hardly be applied to the case of English, which has its own fair share of food images. While our cars eat up the miles, we chew over ideas, digest information, devour with our eyes, make mincemeat of our enemies, and take what they say with a pinch of salt. We are forced to eat our words and our hats and we occasionally bite off more than we can chew. All of which should give us food for thought.

English As She Is Minced

Naftali Wertheim, Tirat Zoi, Israel

English is the compulsory second language in Israeli schools. For readers of the language whose mother tongue is Hebrew, English brings an additional challenge, learning a new alef bet ‘Alphabet’ with its accompanying new rules.

Hebrew has a script generally written without vowels—except for prayer books and books for little children. After the first few years in school, children do without them. The vowels are marks above and mainly below the consonants:

S CN B SN N THS XMPL

A A E EE I I EA E

By the time children start to learn English they are fluent readers and writers of vowelless Hebrew. Consequently, learners of English or of any Latin script language tend to skip a few vowels here and there in a cavalier manner, or, if you prefer, with Israeli chutzpa, as if they were saying, “BG DL, they’re only stpd vwls, we’ll pt a few in fr th stpd tchr who cn’t rd English without them.”

In addition, several consonants do double duty by adding a dot within the letter. Thus, V.=B, f.=p, k.h=k, .s=s, and S.=SH. These marks are also discarded with the vowels, so that often one has to understand by context. That is difficult for foreign students of Hebrew, but we are not dealing with these poor souls here. What we are dealing with is our schoolchildren, who are writing, “Why get ufset ober a pew consonants?”

Hebrew shuns initial v, f, kh, and final b, p, k. So Philip would be “PILIF” and verb would be “BERV.” Are you still with me, dear readers of BRVTM?

Learners of English are also troubled by words like film, corn, and charm. Not only is the lack of a vowel sound between the consonants unacceptable, but the l and r are pronounced in all their glory: “FILLIM, CORREN, CHARREM.” The fact that the vowels are not written does not prove that they are not there, does it? The word “fillim” — “pillim” for the more literate—is very popular. -im being the usual masculine plural ending, our offspring say, “I have two fillim, one fil in my camera and the other in reserve.” I wonder what the singular of Verbatim is. … “Corren Pleckess” is a popular breakfast food, replacing “Kvakair” Oats.

Of course, learners who realize that most plurals are formed in English by adding -s or -es have been known to speak of “two ambulance, one ambulan.” However, the singular of rail ‘any metal bar’ is pronounced “RELLS,” plural “RELLSIM.”

Exhaust, a word much loved in auto repair shops, has become “EGGZOZZ” and is so transliterated into Hebrew.

Still, there is yet hope: now that Israel has signed a peace treaty with Jordan, the sign at the frontier near my home warning approaching persons of “DANGER, FRONT BEHIND!” has been taken down.

Villon’s Straight Tip to All Cross Coves

“Tout aux tavernes et aux fiells”

William Ernest Henley

Suppose you screeve? or go cheap-jack?

Or fake the broads? or fig a nag?

Or thimble-rig? or knap a yack?

Or pitch a snide? or smash a rag?

Suppose you duff? or nose and lag?

Or get the straight, and land your pot?

How do you melt the multy swag?

Booze and the blowens cop the lot.

Fiddle, or fence, or mace, or mack;

Or moskeneer, or flash the drag;

Dead-lurk a crib, or do a crack;

Pad with a slang, or chuck a fag;

Bonnet, or tout, or mump and gag;

Rattle the tats, or mark the spot;

You cannot bag a single stag;

Booze and the blowens cop the lot.

Suppose you try a different tack,

And on the square you flash your flag?

At penny-a-lining make your whack,

Or with the mummers mug and gag?

For nix, for nix the dibbs you bag!

At any graft, no matter what,

Your merry goblins soon stravag:

Booze and the blowens cop the lot.

The Moral

It’s up the spout and Charley Wag With wipes and tickers and what not Until the squeezer nips your scrag, Booze and the blowens cop the lot.

I encountered William Ernest Henley’s translation of a Villon poem and have had a time translating it. Finally, after exhausting the Oxford English Dictionary, I found Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unusual Words, which has almost all the expressions in it. I offer a simple glossary of terms that might be unfamiliar, should anyone else wish to enjoy the poem.

1. cross coves—crooked fellows

2. tout aux tavernes et aux fiells—to the taverns and to the “bitter gall” and “bile,” which I believe to be synecdoche for ‘evil women.’

3. screeve—from the French “escriver” (écriver) ‘to write,’ means ‘to write begging letters.’

4. cheap jack—to go out into the country with a pack on your back, selling ribbons, needles, etc., to the country folk.

5. fake the broads—broads are the three queens in a three-card monte game, and faking broads would be setting up the usual fraudulent game.

6. fig a nag—to fix a horse up so that it looks better than it really is for fraudulent sale.

7. thimble-rig—the equivalent of three-card monte, only with three thimbles and a pea, where the sucker guesses which thimble has the pea under it; shell game; another cheating game.

8. knap a yack—knap is a ‘cheating throw at dice,’ and yack is the ‘sound of finger beating on the forehead’; it means ‘cheating dice.’

9. pitch a snide—push counterfeit money.

10. smash a rag—steal a handkerchief.

11. duff—fix something to look better than it is for fraudulent sale.

12. nose and lag—nose a ‘police informer’; lag a police informer inside a prison.

13. get the straight—have a little luck and win.

14. land your pot—make some money.

15. melt—get rid of or spend.

16. multy—an augmentative word, empty of meaning: like saying goddamn or bloody or some other expletive.

17. swag—loot.

18. blowens—trulls or whores.

19. cop the lot—get everything.

20. fiddle—cheat.

21. fence—buy and sell stolen goods.

22. mace—swindling or robbery by fraud.

23. mack—pimp.

24. moskeneer—a mosker sells or pawns things at pawn shops for more than their true value, frequently with a story of need or some other fraudulent con.

25. flash the drag—(of a man) to wear women’s clothes with “immoral” purposes.

26. dead-lurk—steal from something during church service.

27. crib—a brothel.

28. do a crack—do a robbery or burglary.

29. pad with a slang—walk about with a sales permit to sell.

30. chuck a fag—boost a very small boy up to a barred window so that he can get through the bars and into the house to open the door for his accomplices.

31. bonnet—a shill or capper for a thimble-rigger or a broad-faker: an accomplice.

32. tout—to sell information at horse races for a percentage of the net made on the information.

33. mump and gag—grimace.

34. rattle the tats—shake dice.

35. mark the spot—mark cards.

36. stag—shilling.

37. on the square—honestly, from the masonic symbol of the try square.

38. flash your flag—try.

39. penny-a-lining make your whack—make an attempt to write.

40. mummers—a disparaging word for actors.

41. mug and gag—make faces and clown.

42. goblins—gold sovereigns.

43. stravag—extravagate: wander about.

44. up the spout—at pawn.

45. Charley Wag—a thimble-rigger or other criminal; pawnbroker.

46. wipes—handkerchiefs.

47. tickers—watches.

48. squeezer—the hangman’s noose.

49. nips your scrag—squeezes your neck.

William Ernest Henley had tuberculosis of the bone, was hospitalized for years and treated by Lord Lister himself with, I believe, scraping of the bone, and whatever primitive antisepsis was used in those days, probably carbolic acid. Henley endured years of agony, and his poem, “Invictus,” was truly written from experience.

[Murray C. Zimmerman, M.D. Whittier, California]

EPISTOLA {Tony Hall}

May I offer a few reflections on various matters that struck me while browsing through XXII, 1?

The article Politicking With Words, with its references to rival definitions of Whig and Tory, put me in mind of a cartoon that appeared in Punch in 1896 (since republished in a collection—I don’t go back quite that far). Beneath a drawing of a small girl out walking with her grandfather appeared the following exchange:

“What are Tories and Radicals, Grandpapa?”

“Tories, my dear, are people who like to have a queen, and lords, and bishops, and more or less remain as they are—whilst Radicals object to having a queen and a House of Lords, and are dissatisfied with everything and everybody, jealous of all who are better off than themselves, and are always trying to rob them of their property, and, in fact, they’re a pack of infernal rogues and scoundrels!”

“And which are you, Grandpapa—a Tory or a Radical?”

It would be pleasant to think that we could all ignore prejudiced definition so blithely!

A few nits to be picked, or addenda to be appended:

• A rod (also a pole or perch) was indeed a premetric measure, but it was five and a half yards, not four and a half (Proper Words in Proper Places). When we moved into our present house in the ’60s we were told that the garden measured “five and a half rods square” —the square of 5.5 is not a simple piece of mental arithmetic, I found.

• From the same article, the use of without to mean ‘outside’ persists very commonly in cryptic crossword clues. But then a great deal or archaic or arcane usage crops up in that context.

• The use of car for a tram was certainly common in Norfolk (U.K.) before WWII—I can still picture surviving pre-war signs reading Cars stop here upon request, upon what by then were bus stops, in my home town of Gt Yarmouth in the 1940s.

• As an aside to that, it intrigues me (mildly) that whereas the French shortened automobile to auto, the Scandinavians retained the other end, producing bil for ‘car.’

• A felicitous trader’s name that used to be displayed prominently in the Suffolk town of Oulton Broad in the ’50s was that of one L.S.D. Rich— with reference to predecimal currency.

• I would love to see anyone attempt to drink a Suffolk Punch: this is a particularly huge and beautiful breed of plough-horse. Norfolk Punch, on the other hand, is a commercial non-alcoholic drink of herbal origin and reputedly health-giving.

• It is not only trousers that are implicitly excluded by the printed word (New York Sansculottery): the current obsession with knowing the ingredients of foodstuffs has resulted in several notices on items in bakers' shops, saying Our cakes are made with pure butter only, a culinary feat.

• Could the necessity for dough to be gaumy or gormy (On Good Terms) be a precursor of the term gormless meaning ‘stupid, dull’? (Alas, despite the 18th-century spelling, gaumless, I believe the term comes from Old Norse gaumr ‘heed’).

[Tony Hall, Chearsley, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire]

Feminine Goldfish and Other Hybrids

William H. Dougherty, Santa Fe

Grammatical gender lingers in popular English. We still say, “Fill ‘er up” of a car or “She’s been a good old ship.” But in more formal standard English inanimate objects are now referred to by the neuter pronoun it, though in other Indo-European languages that I know grammatical gender lingers as a sort of ghost of animistic gender haunting all nouns. A Frenchman speaking his native tongue might tell you, “Notre langue francaise, elle est trés belle.” Or a Spaniard or Mexican might say, “Aquella mesa, puedes meterla en la cocina.” Only in parody of a foreign language will a speaker of English say anything like: “The French, she is a beautiful language” or “English as she is spoke.”

In this respect English pronouns referring to animals appear to be marginal. Although according to current prescriptive grammar, animals, especially of unknown sex, should be referred to as it, they practically never are in standard spoken English. A baby is often it, but a cat not obviously a tomcat is more likely to be called she and a dog or horse he, while generally in English the masculine singular pronoun comes naturally when one is referring to an animal. Nor is this a new thing in English. Over a century ago the poet Longfellow wrote:

The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night.

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

A noticeable feature of English as spoken by bilingual Hispanics in New Mexico is a tendency to carry over into English the Spanish gender of whatever living creature they are talking about. For example, whereas Anglos refer to squirrels as he, some Hispanics will consistently call a squirrel she, presumbly because in Spanish the noun for squirrel (ardilla) is feminine.

So I was progressively puzzled to hear a Hispanic friend always refer to my grandson’s goldfish as she/her. To me the little creature, which (whom?) I call Algernon, is a he, though in fact I have not a clue as to its natural gender. The Spanish word for fish is pez, a masculine noun, or loosely, pescado, which is also masculine and properly designates fish as game or fare. True, in sophisticated Spanish a goldfish can be called specifically a carpa dorada, which is feminine, but such a term seemed unlikely to occur in the rustic Spanish of New Mexico. I got to wondering what the local Hispanics would call a goldfish. It would hardly do to ask because when pressed for a word, a native speaker will often come up with one that he thinks is proper rather than the one in common usage. Then I remembered that a plumber whose first language was Spanish once admired our truchitas (in standard Spanish ‘little trout’), which he saw in a goldfish bowl we had. Since for centuries about the only fish known to the Hispanic hillbillies in the mountain valleys of northern New Mexico were trout, the word for trout, trucha, has become generic, supplanting pez and pescado for fish in everyday language. So, I concluded, when Nellie Griego subliminally translated her Spanish word for fish into English, in the process carrying over the Spanish gender, it was the feminine gender of trucha or its diminutive truchita rather than the masculine gender of pez that she attached to the English word.

Spanish gender is not the only element of the language of bilingual Hispanics that may affect their language, whether English or Spanish. Context may influence their choice of words. A few days after I had solved the gender mystery, I climbed onto the roof of our house to inspect the work of two Mexican roofers who were daubing pitch onto cracks in the parapets. “Hay muchos liques?” One of the workmen asked me. “Sí,” I replied, “en este techo hay goteras.” I am too much a purist, not to say pedant, to utter unnecessarily the loan word liques (from the English leak). Indeed, I was slightly bothered by having had the bastard word thrust upon me. So later I asked the same lady who feminized the goldfish why the roofer used liques when Spanish has the common word gotera meaning the same thing. She was not sure; gotera sounded better to her. But later she consulted her husband about the matter and passed along his analysis to me. Her husband had said that one should speak of goteras in a roof, as the roofers had not, but of liques in machinery, for example in a car engine. From this pronouncement I extrapolated that when things are introduced into one culture from another, the words for and about those things tend to come attached to the things. Automobiles (locally called trocas) have been introduced comparatively recently into the Hispanic culture of New Mexico from an industrialized Anglo culture. Anglo words such as troca (from truck) and lique (from leak in a troca) have entered with the Anglo things, whereas houses with their goteras in flat roofs have been a part of Hispanic culture for millennia. So a car motor springs a leak, but properly speaking, a roof or an old human body develops goteras.

Languages influence one another most conspicuously in phonology. A case in point occurred for me when I was exchanging some gossip about a local family squabble over property with the same Hispanic lady who figures in my first two anecdotes. “She shitted her out of that house,” the lady declared. I was startled, indeed slightly shocked to hear this from my rather prim and proper friend. So out of character was the scatalogical word that I could not believe that I had heard it right. I kept wondering off and on about the matter till I realized that what I had heard was a case of double hypercorrection. Spanish lacks the phoneme i as in sit for which the Hispanic ear and tongue tend to substitute the i of Francine. And although in some Mexican dialects the English sh sound has replaced ch, in standard Spanish the phoneme closest to English sh is the affricate ch, which therefore tends to replace sh in the perception of Hispanophones. Subliminally aware of these tendencies in her speech, my unwitting informant had compensated for the tendencies by reverse substitution. Meaning to say “cheated,” she had articulated sh in place of ch and the i of sit in place of the ea.

I believe this sort of phonetic hypercorrection is fairly common in language. In Cockney English, for example, where initial h is regularly dropped there is a tendency to compensate by supplying initial h where it does not belong. There is even a trace of this tendency in American English: “Hit hain’t like ‘im.” In Spain Andalusian Gypsies sometimes lisp their *s’*s and pronounce their soft *c’*s and *z'*s as s.

Though in the short run influences of languages and dialects on each other may result in distortion and ridiculous or embarrassing absurdities, the longterm fruit of linguistic cross-pollination appears to be enrichment, of which the English language provides a shining example.

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The Comparative Russian-English Dictionary of Russian Proverbs & Sayings, with 5543 Entries / 1900 Most Important Proverbs Highlighted / English Proverb Index

Peter Mertvago, (Hippocrene Books, 1995), viii + 477pp.

The title is justified by the comparison of Russian proverbs and sayings with English counterparts and, where applicable, references to Greek and Latin sources as well as the Bible. This is also a timely book in light of the wide interest in post-Soviet Russia. As tourism and economic relations develop, so does interest in the Russian language. However, students of a foreign language soon realize that to master it fully, it is not enough to know the grammatical structure and basic vocabulary: one must also memorize a fair number of phrases and idiomatic expressions and, as a further step, proverbs and sayings.

Generally speaking, the Russians make greater use of proverbs than the Americans or the British. In 1971 the late Russian paremiologist, G. Permiakov, tried to establish a “proverb minimum,” and he found that every Russian adult knew more than 800 proverbs and sayings.

Pre-revolutionary Russia produced a number of dictionaries of proverbs; a well known one was Dal’s Proverbs and Sayings of the Russian People (1862), which contains over 30,000 entries. The popularity of proverbs in Soviet Russia has been reflected in scores of dictionaries, printed in practically all Soviet republics. The communist leaders, including Lenin, recognized early the propaganda value of conveniently selected entries in the hands of what the communists called “agitators,” apparatchiks and politruks ‘political leaders.’ Most of their publications excluded religious and “capitalist” proverbs and sayings. They encouraged instead the proliferation of proletarian publications which were sold at very low prices.

Against the large number of Soviet dictionaries of only Russian proverbs, comparative and bilingual dictionaries, Russian-English ones were rarely published and they contained between 500 and a couple of thousand entries only. That is why Peter Mertvago’s dictionary of 5,500 entries is a useful addition to comparative paremiographical literature.

The compiler starts with a short introduction dealing with the definition of proverb. This is a thankless and practically insoluble task. He quotes Permiakov’s formulation, “Proverbs and proverbial phrases are signs of situations or of a certain type of relationship between objects” —not particularly lucid. A more down-to-earth definition is given by John Simpson in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs: “A proverb is a traditional saying which offers advice or presents a moral in a short and pithy manner”; but even this does not entirely satisfy scholars. The Introduction touches on the origin of proverbs and their similarity in other languages. The publication in 1500 of Erasmus' Adagia brought about a trend to translate Latin and Greek proverbs and quotations into national languages. It also started an inter-borrowing from common historical and cultural antecedents.

Mertvago also deals with the difference between a proverb and a saying. He quotes the Russian proverb, Pogovorka-tsvetok, poslovitsa— yagodka ‘a saying is a flower, a proverb is a berry.’ The relative brevity of many Russian proverbs stems from the fact that the Russian language has no articles and also resorts idiomatically to “participial condensation” by not using oblique forms of the verb to be. Alliteration and rhyme help to memorize them.

The main part of the dictionary is covered in about 380 pages. Each entry is numbered, which is useful for cross-references to semantically similar entries. The Russian text (in Cyrillic) is followed by a literal translation in English, unless there is a clear English equivalent, by which Mertvago means both lexical and conceptual correspondence. Equivalents are printed in bold face. Where there is no equivalent the dictionary gives a corresponding English version, sometimes a few variants.

The entries are arranged in alphabetical order by the first Russian letter. There are several other methods for arranging proverbs and sayings. Mertvago could have followed the modern trend and used the key word or thematic arrangements. However, compilers of proverb dictionaries know that there is no perfect system for arranging proverbs: each has its advantages and flaws. Ultimately it comes down to personal choice and for whom the dictionary is intended.

In a dictionary of this size, the complier is faced with the task of including or excluding a certain quotation—not a very easy decision when one is dealing with a stock of scores of thousands of Russian proverbs. The fact is that the dictionary contains popular versions, used in modern spoken Russian. The most important and commonly known proverbs are marked with an asterisk. This will be appreciated by the non-native reader who is not familiar with the popularity of a certain proverb or saying. There are 1900 entries with asterisks.

There are two appendices. One deals with more than 100 proverbs and sayings containing personal and geographic names. For example, Chemu Vanya nye nauchilsya, tovo Ivan nye vyuchit ‘What little Johnnie hasn’t learnt, old John will not learn’; V Rimye byl i Papu nye vidal ‘Went to Rome, but didn’t see the Pope.’ The other appendix deals with the structure of the Russian proverb and gives separate sections of analytical proverbs, metaphorical ones, similes—proverbial comparisons (about 100), as well as contrasting couplets and negational proverbs, etc. There is a four-page bibliography of main sources. At the end of the dictionary, there is a large (eighty-three-page) index of English proverbs arranged by key words and cross referenced to the main part of the dictionary.

To sum up, this is a comparative dictionary with a number of useful features, as if Mertvago wanted to fill in gaps existing in other dictionaries. There are hardly any printing errors and plenty of “white spacing” making reading easy. It is a commendable publication.

[Emanuel Strauss, Merstham, Surrey]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The Electronic Publishing Forum

Volume 20, [n.d.], (Serendipity Systems, P. O. Box 140, San Simeon, California 93452).

The 3.5" diskette containing the Forum arrived with a friendly note from John Galuszka (telephone: (805) 927-5259; e-mail: J.GALUSZKA@genie.geis,com) saying, “This will be of interest to your computer-literate readers.” Nothing loath, we loaded it into the computer for a run.

Before commenting on the contents of the Forum, I must disburden myself of some prejudices long held against computer programmers and other specialists. First, though, I must say that I have enormous admiration for their fertile imaginations, ingenuity, and extraordinarily facile minds: some of the programs they have developed in recent years are truly astonishing in their complexity. That acknowledgment having been made, I find myself continually irritated by their cavalier dismissal of everything that human beings developed in the course of history: it reflects an adolescent mentality that is scornful of anything that might have taken place before these parvenu geniuses put finger to keyboard. Rather than go into great detail, I shall focus on one important feature offered by many word-processing programs, namely, alphabetization. If one goes back to the order in which ASCII characters are arranged (which was a matter of system and convenience, with little or no attempt at alphabetization, except that the lower case and capital letters are in alphabetical order and the numbers are in sequence), one can see where later alphabetization programs derive their order. As most lexicographers, librarians, indexers, editors, and other literate and intelligent people know (and as those who compile telephone directories in some parts of the world have learned), there are preferred alphabetization systems. These are generally letter by letter (with some standardized hierarchy established for capitals, diacritics, punctuation, numerals, and other anomalies) and word by word (which, though it is not usually suitable for dictionaries, works reasonably well for certain kinds of material. One has to look hard—I have, and still, without success—to find a system that places ‘tis and ‘til within reach of the letter T, that does not sort U-238 at the end of the U listings, and that does not put several pages between éclat and eclectic. I recently wrote to Novell to complain about the sorting order in WordPerfect and received a reply, totally unresponsive, that explained in kindly detail how I could (mis)sort words in different columns of a database. Perhaps a reader will rush to my aid in my hour of need.

The point is not entirely irrelevant in relation to the Forum. First of all, neither the wrapper nor the accompanying descriptive matter tells a novice how to access the information on the disc. (The usual way, in Windows, is to click on Main, then twice on File Manager; then on the drive, usually A or B, where the disc has been placed; then, move the cursor to the listed program that has the suffix “.exe,” move it to File, then down the list to Run, and click twice.) No instruction is included for accessing the information via MS/DOS, either. Once in the file, it is not child’s play to navigate amongst the various categories of data. If one goes through sequentially, he finds this at the end of a given selection:

To read the next article, select … <20-2.#>*

INDEX ……………………*<INDEX0.#>**

I could find no useful index: though there is a list of file names, they are numerical and offer no clue as to their contents.

The Introduction offers a succinct description of the Forum:

The Electronic Publishing Forum is a quarterly, on-disk publication devoted to the subject of electronic publishing using computer disks. It includes information on publications, publishers, and programs related to this subject. Information for writers, with writer’s guidelines from publishers, is also included. Articles on related subjects are included. A database of electronic books “in print” is updated quarterly. Information on the topics discussed in the back issues of the Forum will be found in the Catalog section of this disk.

Writers, publishers, and others interested in this subject are invited to contribute to the discussion of issues related to electronic publishing. Submit material to: John Galuszka, Editor, The Electronic Publishing Forum, P.O. Box 140, San Simeon, CA 93452. Subscriptions to this publication cost $12.00 for four issues (postpaid to North American addresses; overseas add $8.00 for shipping; California residents add 7.25% sales tax.)

Subscribe to “The Electronic Publishing Forum” and keep informed about these developments for only $12.00 a year. See the REGISTER.NOW file. Please note that the contents of this magazine are the same in the shareware edition and the subscriber edition, but subscribers also get bundled copies of the sample programs with their copy. If you found this publication on the Internet, on a BBS, or one of the commercial on-line services as file EPF20.ZIP, you have the whole magazine, but not the sample programs that go with it.

The foregoing reflects enthusiasm, intelligence, and resourcefulness but it is badly written, is riddled with the kind of jargon that frightens away anybody not privy to the secret language of software, and, consequently, makes the rest of its content suspect.

Notwithstanding, the content that was read is not without interest and merit. There is, for example, a longish list of “zines,” described as follows:

For those of you not acquainted with the zine world, “zine” is short for either “fanzine” or “magazine,” depending on your point of view. Zines are generally produced by one person or a small group of people, done often for fun or personal reasons, and tend to be irreverent, bizarre, and/or esoteric. Zines are not “mainstream” publications—they generally do not contain advertisements (except, sometimes, advertisements for other zines), do not have a large subscriber base, and are generally not produced to make a profit.

There follows information about formats and, under “How Do I Get the E-zines?,” a lot of instructions given mostly in computer jargon. It is difficult to describe the content of this catalogue, so here is a sample:

Albert Hofmann’s Strange Mistake

“A hypertext ‘zine commemorating the 50th anniversary of the accidental discovery of LSD, 16 April, 1943. The document contains archives by authorities from Albert Hofmann to Abbie Hoffman, hypertext fac/tion on CIA-sponsored acid tests, and testimonial solicited from users all over the world.”

There follow details identifying the editor, format, and how to access the “zine.” Many of the descriptions are longer, some are shorter. They include Armadillo Culture (“Being the excremeditation of a hyperactive armadillo’s activities, opinions, and other stuff … ”), Athene (“The online magazine of amateur creative writing,” accompanied by

“NOTE: Athene became defunct in 1989. Intertext is its immediate successor,” which I assume is facetious), and BLINK (which “would like to be a forum for the issues surrounding the intersection of consciousness and technology. This is our best defense against postmodern angst: To critically look at and anticipate the cultural and social changes spurred by the rapid development of technology”).

One quickly gets the impression that much of this material comes from the fringes of California, but Breakaway comes from Norway, The Bucknellian from Bucknell University, in Pennsylvania, Chaos Control from Rhode Island, and so forth.

Another file that was examined is called “Unclassified Ads, etc.” It contains a listing of a surprising number of novels and other works (like The Hypertext Hamlet), none of which is accompanied by the customary bibliographic information: in most instances, even the authors are not listed. The prices range from $6.00 (for Electronic Books in Print) to $20.00 (for three novels by Marian Allen. The variety is enormous, ranging from books of poetry—or, at least, of poems—to a Better Volleyball, Bicycle Tune-up, 21st Century Almanac, Clowning for Fun & Profit (a How-to book), and scores of other works on fiction, nonfiction, and reference. An order form (which one prints out from a computer) is provided. The price is not omitted, but most are available for very little—about $5.00 per disc.

In sum, the Forum offers a very mixed bag, indeed, some of it, as can be seen from the quality of the text, bordering on the semiliterate, yet much of it rife with ideas, some of which, depending on one’s interests and inclinations, must be said to be stimulating. For myself, I find it tedious to read lengthy sections of text from a screen, though that is less likely to bother computer-philes and -phanatics.

Not being a prospect for Internet, World Wide Web, or any of the other network servers (as they are called), I was relieved to see that a subscriber to Forum could receive physical diskettes in the mail and not have to access the information via modem. Still, a computer of middling sophistication is required, so those who have not (yet) joined the future need not apply.

Laurence Urdang

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Brewer’s Quotations: A Phrase and Fable Dictionary

Nigel Rees, (Sterling Publishing, 1995), xv + 397pp.

Books of quotations are curious things. I have never compiled one, but I understand that publishers like them because they sell well. As I use such books mainly as reference books, I am probably the wrong reviewer for this work by the estimable Nigel Rees, a Londoner well known as the host of a BBC radio program, Quote … Unquote, who publishes an amusing, entertaining, informative newsletter with the same title. To be brutally frank, I care little about what Jimi Hendrix and Marlon Brando might have said (or, in the latter case, mumbled): of far greater moment are the words of people like Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, and Mae West. Whether Greta Garbo actually ever said, “I want to be alone” (she did), is of little consequence in the larger scheme of things; but the world consists of many parts, including many smaller—even infinitesimal—things, and we must not turn our noses up at the exact wording of Neil Armstrong’s moon quotation: at least it was in English, and one need not try to explain that in Et tu, Brute, the last word is not the English word brute but the vocative case of Latin Brutus and then go off into the paroxysmal grammar of Latin to explain what a vocative is.

In any event, Rees sets forth the purpose of his book with admirable clarity in his Introduction. (If one wants to know why someone wrote or compiled a book, one should always read the author’s Preface, Foreword, Introduction, or What-have-you). After a brief mention of some of the things the book is not, he continues:

What Brewer’s Quotations does contain is the most commonly misquoted, misattributed, misascribed, misremembered and most disputed sayings that there are. It also contains sayings that are frequently unattributed, unascribed, misunderstood and misapprehended, or words whose authors might wish to reconsider them.

[p. ix]

The reason for putting Brewer into the title (according to Rees) is that his book “follows naturally in the tradition of … Dictionary of Phrase and Fable [which] singled out words and phrases ‘with tales to tell’ and did not attempt an unachievable comprehensiveness.” “[N]ot attempt an unachievable comprehensiveness” is a marvelous quotation that I must borrow for my next book, review, article, or comment on the parlous state of the world, and I shall now be able to preface it with, “In the words of Nigel Rees …” I found Rees’s Introduction more entertaining than the body of the book.

I had to put the book to some sort of test, so I looked up I’m all right, Jack, which is not in the fairly comprehensive Index; instead, I found it under “Jack: I’m all right J.,” and it would be unfair to complain about that; to learn that it was said to come from a novel by Sir David Bone is not much of a revelation, nor is it particularly exciting to learn that Eric Partridge thinks it arose earlier as a minced form of some taboo Victorianism (if such things actually existed).

Much more entertaining is a slow browse through the pages, which reveals items like this:

Book of Common Prayer, The

1662 version

The quick and the dead.

In the Apostles’ Creed: ‘From thence he [Christ] shall come to judge the quick and the dead’, ‘quick’ meaning ‘alive’.

To Lord Dewar (1864-1930), a British industrialist, is credited the joke that there are ‘only two classes of pedestrians in these days of reckless motor traffic—the quick, and the dead’. George Robey ascribed it to Dewar in Looking Back on Life (1933). A Times leader in April that same year merely ventured: ‘The saying that there are two sorts of pedestrians, the quick and the dead, is well matured.’

I begin to cleave to the ‘well-matured’ story, I’m afraid; but it does have the advantage today, when the younger generations demonstrate a total lack of respect for tradition, of not being overworked by the “comedians” who rarely say anything funny or even clever but make up their routines to remind us of our foibles. My foibles are very serious, indeed, and are not anything to joke about.

Readers should be aware that Rees is British and that the book has a British leaning, less in the choice of sources, perhaps, than in the inclusion of quotations that are opaque to those who are not of the British persuasion and in attributions to obscure Englishmen—John Braham, English singer and songwriter (1774-1856), for example.

The structure of Brewer’s Quotations is simple: the main text lists authors in alphabetical order with quotations following in alphabetical order by first word; in a few cases, where several works are cited from a single author, like Dickens, the titles are in alphabetical order with the quotations following. On every page, the quotations are numbered sequentially, providing a quick reference point for the Index, which lists quotations by their key words, in some cases listing them more than once: for example, By their fruits ye shall know them is listed in the Index both under fruits and under know. One criticism focuses on the designer of the book, over whom the publisher’s editor (if not Nigel Rees) should have exercised some influence: in a book in which the page numbers are an essential piece of the reference apparatus, they should not be set in the center of the bottom of the page, where they are hard to see when thumbing through, but at the top, as close to the foredge as possible.

Brewer’s Quotations was originally published by Cassell, in 1994. Other titles in the Brewer series, a name perpetuated more for commercial association with Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable than for relevance of content, are, in addition to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 14th Edition, Brewer’s Concise Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Brewer’s Politics, Brewer’s Theatre, and the anachronistic Brewer’s Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Phrase and Fable [BIBLIOGRAPHIA, XVIII, 4, 19], Brewer’s Cinema, and Brewer’s Twentieth-Century Music.

Laurence Urdang

OBITER DICTA: Aviatrixes, Clinchers, & Differentials: Bulgarian Slang in the ’90s

Peter Constantine, New York City

Hearing the vernacular spoken on the modern streets of Sofia is like hearing a cross-section of this Slavic nation’s tumultuous history. Words of Church Slavonic origin mingle freely with a large body of Turkish words—a legacy of five hundred years of occupation—along with words from Romany, Romanian, Modern Greek, German, French, Italian, Tatar, and Macedonian. After World War II, Bulgaria’s close cultural ties with the former Soviet Union ushered in a large batch of Russian neologisms.

Today Bulgaria’s newest generation is opting for radical new English or English-sounding words— “cool” words that are kreizi ‘crazy,’ fain ‘fine,’ bomba ‘bomb,’ tiptop ‘tiptop,’ shik ‘chic,’ vuvelirno ‘jewellike,’ dzhust ‘just,’ absolyutno ‘absolutely,’ or sadistichno ‘sadistic.’

In late-night bars, euphemistically known in student slang as biblioteki ‘libraries,’ Bulgaria’s youth mixes and mingles, rapping in trendy new words. The heavy-metal crowd is the most radical creator of new terms. Sofia’s heavy-metal culture calls itself metalurgiya ‘metallurgy,’ and the heavy-metal aficionado is known as a metalurg ‘metallurgist,’ or metal for short.

As the tough youths sit on bar stools eyeing the passing crowd, sexist labels proliferate. An attractive woman is a beibi ‘baby,’ bambina (from the Italian), or bonbon (from the French). Large breasts are referred to as balkon ‘balcony,’ or bombi ‘bombs,’ and a large bottom, curiously, as a diferenzial ‘differential (in a car).’ (In some of Sofia’s slang groups, the even stranger expression shvester—from Schwester, German for ‘sister’—is preferred.) A thin woman is called an antena. A rich woman who buys rounds of drinks is known as a mangizlika, from the Romany word mangis ‘hard cash.’

On a rougher level, kushetka ‘couch’ from French couchette, is used pejoratively for a woman who has many sexual partners, and avantazhiya (from the Italian word for ‘advantage’) implies that the woman is looking to profit from the men she attracts. A woman always short of cash is known as an aviatorka ‘aviatrix’: instead of being sensible with her money, she is flying high.

Men, too, are slotted into neat categories. The gardrob (as in ‘wardrobe’) is the tough muscle-man. A smooth operator is called klincher—a “clincher.” Men without any finesse are called buldozer. The droger is the ‘male drug addict,’ drogerka the female. (The drugs they take are called vitamini).

Aborigén ‘aborigine’ is the provincial who has come to Sofia for a night on the town. He is also known as a kaskét ‘cap,’ as in the French casquette, a modern pun on kalpák ‘fur cap,’ an offensive taunt to out-of-towners that is of Turkish origin. (These hat expressions stem from the fact that Bulgarian provincials traditionally wear large home-made fur caps.)

Modern words for ‘homosexual’ are pedi, pederuga, and pedal (as in bicycle pedal). All three developed from the Russian pede, a slangy contraction of pederast, which was borrowed from the Greek by way of French. (Coincidentally, modern French argot uses both pede and pedal in the same way.) If, however, a homosexual is particularly aggressive and masculine-looking, he is called manáf “Turk’ or its stronger derivative, manafchiya.

A particularly interesting trait of Bulgarian slang is the astonishing array of rough words of Turkish origin for ‘idiot,’ ‘loser,’ ‘asshole,’ etc.: abdál, ahmak, bálama, balamúr, balamúrnik, balúk, budalá, bunák, chirák, chukundur, dangalák, dangul, edepsizlík, esnáf, haidamák, hairsús, haivan, haivanin, inatchiya, kakavanín, katraník, kepazé, kusurlíya, leke, mandá, maskará, pachá, palamud, perdesis, rendé, sersém, and sersemin.

Mixed in with this hefty portion of harsh Turkish words is an ever-growing batch of newer Western additions. What are Bulgaria’s most “in” words in the ’90s for ‘idiot’ and ‘loser’?: striptiz uotur ‘striptease water,’ a curious reference to maladroit, foolish individuals; kretenozavur ‘cretinosaurus’; boiler ‘one whose head is full of bubbling hot water’; sifon ‘siphon, one whose head is like an empty tube’; bushón ‘fuse,’ from French bouchon ‘cork’; diaria ‘diarrhea’; loko from Spanish loco; galosh as in ‘galoshes’; kashón ‘crate,’ from Italian cassone; lainer ‘ocean liner,’ a pun on the Bulgarian word lainó ‘scum.’

Up or Down to You

John Musgrave, Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk

Robb Wilton, that acclaimed and dearly-loved British comedian of the thirties and forties, introduced one of his best wartime monologues with the classic first lines,

“The day war broke out, my wife said to me, ‘It’s up to you!’

I said, ‘What is?”’

If he had been writing the sketch today, he would probably have quoted his wife as saying, “It’s down to you.” Over the last forty years or so, the expression up to … has been widely replaced by down to … in British usage. It has been a quite unnecessary transformation, and an unfortunate one because it brings with it an inferior nuance. Starting in less literate circles as part of slipshod “mod” jargon, this replacement has gradually been adopted more and more widely. It can now be noted in use by school teachers (and some teachers of English at that), by university dons, and even by BBC newsreaders and commentators.

How has this departure come about? It probably has some association with social and moral changes which, over the last few decades, have brought increasingly churlish and irresponsible attitudes. Up to … conveys a sense of duty, of looking up to the person or body concerned, with confidence in their integrity. Down to … brings a sense of looking downwards to them, somewhat disparagingly, and blaming them. No longer does a difficult situation arise and the question immediately follow “Who’s this up to?”—meaning, ‘Who will unquestionably regard it as his/her responsibility to sort the matter out?’ Rather is it now an immediate question of “Who’s this down to?”—meaning, ‘Who can be found to blame, so that the job of correction can be quickly thrust down to them, leaving others untouched and unassailable.’

Does it really matter? Or is it just part of the continuous evolution of our rich and living language? Surely, careful consideration leads to the conclusion that it does matter and that the change should be deplored. Why? Because a perfectly good phrase suggesting honourable obligation or moral duty has been replaced by an inferior one implying a bureaucratic, regulatory responsibility, and even perhaps litigation and punishment.

Let us try to retain up to …, using it whenever it may be appropriate; then down to … may once again be confined to its proper contexts.

A Fourth Use of the Verb Rodomontade in the Eighteenth Century

Michele Valerie Ronnick, Wayne State University

Under the rubric for the verb rodomantade in the second edition of the OED, one finds a trio of examples from the eighteenth century. The first is from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) which informs us of its meaning “to brag thrasonically; to boast like Rodomonte.” The second and third citations are found in the works of Fanny Burney, a member of Johnson’s circle. In both her Cecilia (1782) and Diary (1787), we see the verb functioning as a gerund. In the former work, we read “there’s nothing to be got by rhodomontading,” and in the latter, “I think his rhodomontading as innocent as that of our cousin.”

Evidence for the presence of the word on the other side of the Atlantic has been limited heretofore to a single 19th-century example. In this particular instance the verb is employed as a present participle by Washington Irving in Life & Letters (1831) to describe “his hero a rodomontading Congressman from the Western States.” There is, however, another ocourrence of rodomontade about fifty years earlier, in the writing of John Adams.¹ In a letter to Elbridge Gerry, written from Braintree, Massachusetts, 17 October 1779, Adams described the tactics he had tried to use in Paris to avoid political queries made by an insistent Ralph Izard: “At Sometimes [sic] I endeavoured to perswade [sic] him to excuse me, at others I rhodomontaded it, with him, and endeavoured to divert him from it … ”² Exactly how the word entered Adams’s vocabulary is not known. The verb probably came to his attention through Johnson’s Dictionary, with which both Adams and his wife, Abigail, were familiar.³ Nevertheless, while Adams’s source remains obscure, his application of it does no longer.

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Political Incorrectness

It is reported in The Independent [9 December 1994] that on the South Side in Chicago, local gangs prefer to be called niggers “to distinguish themselves from the despised suburban upwardly mobile ‘blacks.’ Meanwhile, among the American white liberals the correct term is now ‘people of colour.”’ Can this be confirmed?

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“But after a one hour delay, the game was canceled, bringing a shower of booze and debris from the estimated 10,000 people attending.” [From an AP story in Cape Cod Times, 28 September 1991, page B1. Submitted by Edwin A. Rosenberg, Danbury, Connecticut.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“If you are seated in an exit row and you cannot read this card, or cannot see well enough to follow these instructions, please tell a crew member.” [From an emergency instruction card on United Airlines planes. Submitted by J. Robert Orpen, Jr., Chicago.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“You and I know George Bush is the only man who can and should keep the reigns of Presidency in 1992.” [From an undated letter from Floyd Brown, National Chairman, Presidential Victory Committee, received 28 September 1992. Submitted by J. B. Lawrence, San Bernardino.]

Crossword Puzzle

Across

1. Still at sea, on a wind- jammer presumably. (8)

5. A creature coming back very thin. (6)

9. Reduced reward for an old thief. (8)

4. Being some little finessess

10. Herod’s sort of people— mass of them. (6)

12. Looking unwell, parted with about two pounds. (6).

13. Prepare the papers in Is- rael for such a serious crime. (8)

15. Woundered? This will buck you up. (4, 2, 3, 3)

18. How to become acquainted with the leading part. (12)

23. Favourite optical characteristic. (4, 4) make light of it. (6)

26. Builder beheaded parish priest. (6)

27. A strike in town causes great trouble. (8)

28. No need for him to work to rule. (6)

29. Fighter pilot holding a first in Hebrew found all at sea. (8)

Down

1. Arms control! (6)

2. House pet let loose on the ranch. (6)

3. Pupil on strike is hard rough and uncouth. (7) at the Bridge table. (4)

6. The lion represented in old stone. (7)

7. Crazy girl crazy about a song. (8)

8. Model reputation, passed from father to son. (4, 4)

11. Seabird consumed three little leaves. (7)

14. Way to be ill-mannered to the student making some pastry. (7)

16. Might be mitred? Yes, it could be. (8)

17. Old Italian centaurs running amok. (8)

19. Demanding lov, emperor leads the country. (7)

20. Comprehensive cover, (7)

21. Save to get fabric with soft finish. (6)

22. Ultimate letter hostile organization sent round is the catalyst. (6)

25. Lay up in some special wrapping. (4)

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“A Serbian soldier monitors the trajectory of a tank shell just fired through binoculars on a hill southeast of Sarajevo Sunday.” [A photo caption from the Pocono Record (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania), 11 February 1993. Submitted by Alfred W. Munson, Stroudsburg.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Pop megastar Michael Jackson … insisted he had ‘very little’ plastic surgery during a live television interview with Oprah Winfrey on Wednesday.” [From an AP story in the Pocono Record (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania), 11 February 1993. Submitted by Alfred W. Munson, Stroudsburg.]

Internet Archive copy of this issue

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1. In America, during the 19th century, the noun rodomontade, spelled “rhodomontade,” appears in the autobiography of Catharine Maria Sedgwick, whose work dates from 1853. See The Power of Her Sympathy, ed. Mary Kelley (Boston, 1993), 70. I am grateful to Conrad E. Wright, the editor of publications of the Massachusetts Historical Society, for this information. ↩︎

2. The Papers of John Adams, ed. Robert J. Taylor (Harvard University Press, 1989), vol. 8, 206. ↩︎

3. See The Adams Family Correspondence, eds. L. H. Butterfield and Marc Friedlaender (Harvard University Press, 1973) vol. 4, 177, as well as The Spur of Fame, ed. John A Schutz and Douglass Adair (The Huntington Library, 1966) vol 1, 92; vol. 2, 2436. ↩︎