Vol XXX, No 1 []

Journo’s Boffo Lingo: The Slang of Daily Variety

David Wilton, Emeryville, California

Those who for the first time open up Daily Variety, the trade paper of Hollywood and the American entertainment industry, are often baffled and stymied by the paper’s use of language. Take, for example, this headline, “‘KING’ NIPS SHIP WITH 11 NOMS” (28 Jan 2004, p. 24). To most the headline is unintelligible, but to those familiar with Variety it is announcing that the movie Return of the King beat out Master and Commander with eleven Academy Award nominations. Another example is the opening line of an article that appears in the 11 February 2004 issue, “A hefty writedown at Blockbuster knocked Viacom into the red last quarter despite a strong perf at those true-blue cable nets and strides at Paramount, where prexy Mel Karmazin praised the 2004 pic slate.” Variety employs a number of grammatical tricks and jargon terms, which it dubs “slanguage,” to achieve its distinctive style.

This style achieves two main objectives. Like all jargon, it creates the sense of an “in crowd.” It seeks to exclude those outside the industry and puff up the Texas-sized egos of those in Hollywood. It also enlivens up what could be a rather dull subject. Sure Hollywood is all about celebrity and glamour, but Variety is not. Variety is a business paper, concerned with contracts and deals, profit and loss. The inventive use of language spices up the subject matter and combines the tone of a gossip column with the subject of a business journal.

Variety began publication in 1905, founded by Simon J. “Sime” Silverman, a gambler and general ne’er-do-well, with a $2,500 loan from his father. Silverman went into the news business with the motto, “bury the puff and give me the fact.”

Silverman may have eschewed “puff,” but from the beginning Variety used a distinctive, slangy style. In 1933, the paper became a daily and changed its name to Daily Variety. On 17 July 1935, the paper published the most famous instance of its slanguage, “Sticks Nix Hick Pix,” a headline for an article about rural audiences rejecting a film about rural life.

The largest element in Variety’s style is the jargon or slang that it employs. The paper deploys a bewildering array of jargon terms without explanation or aid to the neophyte reader.

The inventive nature of Variety’s slang is well documented. The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, includes some twenty-odd entries whose initial citations are from the magazine. These include: boffo (12 May 1943); fave, a clipping of favorite (16 Mar 1938); featurette (28 Jan 1942); Grammy, the musical award (30 Sep 1959); juve, a youth (17 Apr 1935); kitchenette (7 May 1910); nabe, a clipping of neighborhood (14 Feb 1933); nance, an effeminate or gay man (6 Aug 1910); nite (13 Jan 1928); payola (19 Oct 1938); pix (19 Jul 1932); punch line (25 Nov 1921); shim, a blend of she and him, meaning a transvestite or transsexual (19 Feb 1975); shoot-‘em-up (11 Feb 1953); small time (30 Apr 1910); strip and tease (1 Oct 1930), strip teaser (26 Nov 1930), and strip tease (2 Dec 1936); the use of wow as a verb (24 Dec 1924); and, quite aptly, show biz (13 Jun 1945).

But Variety’s slanguage goes well beyond these terms that have made their way into the general vocabulary of the nation. Daily, it uses arcane jargon terms both from the entertainment industry and unique to the paper itself. The meanings of some of these terms are often not immediately obvious to the casual reader. One such is the verb to ankle to mean to quit or leave; “a successful guest-hosting stint on Jack Benny’s radio show led to an offer to host The Tonight Show when the show’s first host, Steve Allen, ankled” (28 Jan 2004, p. 2). Another Variety verb is to pact, meaning to sign a contract; “the studio has already pacted with NBC for a drama series” (16 Sep 2003, p. 1). There is also to front, meaning to host; “way out ahead of the game is American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, fronting a gabber that began Monday” (16 Jan 2004, p. 38). The paper’s slanguage is not limited to verbs. The adjective legit is used to denote live theater, after the phrase the legitimate theater; “Schumacher described what they wanted in their legit Poppins” (28 Jan 2004, p. 14). The paper even carries a regular column reviewing the stage titled “Legit Review.”

Other terms in Variety’s slanguage are more obvious. Famous people are celebs, most of whom seek to topline, or star in, a movie or show; “Bernsen […] has tapped General Hospital star Kim Shriner to topline the pic” (6 Feb 2004, p. 11).

A film is a pic, plural pix, and a performance is a perf. The verb says is often spelled sez; “Robert Vaughn sez they were shooting the Hustler series” (16 Sep 2003, p. 4). Business becomes biz and the biz is, of course, show business.

Femme is used as both an adjective and a noun for female; “Heart will revolve around the femme lead coming to a Los Angeles performing arts academy” (16 Jan 2004, p. 7); “Reba, […] was strongest among femmes 12-34 (2.3/9), placing third for the hour” (16 Sep 2003, p. 6). And terrific is clipped to terrif; “The New Line toppers told me they’ve received terrif test screenings of The Lord of the Rings”

(16 Sep 2003, p. 4).

Other clippings include names for entertainment centers in Los Angeles and New York. Hollywood becomes H’w’d and Beverly Hills is BevHills. Similarly, on the East Coast, Broadway becomes B’way and New York is known as Gotham; “the harried homemaker’s federal trial in Gotham” (28 Jan 2004, p. 6).

Film genres have their own Variety names. Action movies are actioners; “Warner Bros. unspools Ice Cube actioner Torque in 2,463 theaters” (16 Jan 2004, p. 7). A biographical movie is a biopic; a comedy is a laffer; and a romancer is a romantic movie. A documentary is either a doc or a docu, and a star vehicle is a starrer; “Fonda has not acted in movies since the 1990 Robert DeNiro starrer Stanley & Iris” (16 Jan 2004, p. 5). Cartoon is either clipped to toon; “IDT Entertainment, which last month acquired a controlling interest in Vancouver toon shop Mainframe Entertainment” (28 Jan 2004, p. 6), or is called a tooner. This last is not to be confused with tuner, a musical, “‘POPPINS’ TUNER TAPS A MARY” (28 Jan 2004, p. 12).

A film that can be classified as both a comedy or a drama is a dramedy. A martial arts film is chopsocky; “Bill started out as one long pic until Miramax decided to whack it in half and release the ultra-violent chopsocky yarn as a two-part franchise” (Variety.com, 8 Jan 2004). The paper dubs melodramas as mellers; “Pic noms are rounded out by […] vet Antonio Mercero’s teen cancer meller The Fourth Floor, a local hit” (Variety.com, 10 Dec 2003). A suspense film is a suspenser and a western is an oater, “Series was a space oater set 500 years in the future, tracking the journeys of the crew aboard the Serenity” (Variety.com, 2 Mar 2004).

Television genres have similar nicknames. A made-for-TV movie is a telepic or a made-for; “Although Cohen won’t direct the made-for, he did supervise the commercials for GM” (Variety.com 8 Mar 2004). A talk show is either a gabber, a talker, or a yakker; “Meanwhile, reigning triumvirate The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Phil and Live With Regis and Kelly have been the only gabbers to post any ratings upswing in households, this season to date” (16 Jan 2004, p. 38).

Children’s television is kidvid and a sitcom aimed at teenagers is a zitcom. A soap opera is a sudser; “Francesca James, former exec producer of ABC’s All My Children, was the first soap actress to exec produce a sudser” (Variety.com, 24 Feb 2004). A television miniseries is a mini and a TV special is a spec or a spesh; “Fox is no doubt hoping for boffo Nielsens from its animals boffing spesh, which is slated to air Feb. 13” (Variety.com, 19 Jan 2004). The plural is sometimes spex.

Nicknames of the various Hollywood studios are also part of Variety slang. Disney is either the Mouse or Mouse House; “The Mouse House bows ‘Disney’s Teacher’s Pet’” (16 Jan 2004, p. 7). Those that work there are, obviously, Mouseketeers, “Roy Disney and Stanley Gold are urging Mouse shareholders to reject head Mouseketeer Michael Eisner’s retention as board chairman” (28 Jan 2004, p. 6). Metro-Goldwin Mayer, or MGM, also has an animal nickname, the Lion or Leo, after its logo of a roaring lion.

Other studio nicknames are initialisms or clippings: WB for Warner Bros.; BV for Buena Vista, a Walt Disney label; Viv U for Vivendi Universal, or just U for Universal; Columbia Pictures is Col; and Paramount is P. These are the majors, as opposed to the smaller independent productions, or indies; “The great Screener Wars pitted the indies vs. the majors” (28 Jan 2004, p. 1). Mid-size studios, like Miramax and New Line, that are neither majors nor indies are known as mini-majors. The independent production companies, those that do the grunt work of producing films and TV shows, are shingles.

Shingles are usually centered around an individual producer who has metaphorically hung out a shingle. Jersey Films, for example, is actor-producer Danny DeVito’s shingle; “Landgraf had to negotiate an exit from both Jersey and Sony Pictures Television, where the shingle is in the final months of a production deal” (16 Jan 2004, p. 4).

Like the movie studios, each of the major US television networks, or nets, has its own nickname. ABC is the Alphabet net, while CBS, NBC, and the WB networks get their nicknames from their logos. CBS is the Eye and NBC is the Peacock. The WB is the Frog; “Frog did especially well on Thursday” (28 Jan 2004, p. 12). The Fox network does not get its own nickname; presumably the official name is catchy enough on its own. And the individual network affiliate stations, are affils.

Shows that air on outlets other than the major networks are off-net; “As for off-net action, there’s a slew of sitcoms waiting to strut their stuff in repeat mode” (16 Jan 2004, p. 38). Off-net stations can be pubcasters, or public broadcasters. They can be cablers, cable broadcasters; “Kids cabler [Nickelodeon] averaged 1.8 million viewers for the month” (28 Jan 2004, p. 12). Or they can be satcasters, satellite broadcasters. Subscription TV is feevee; “the digitalization of Germany’s cable systems would offer new and cost-effective opportunities for feevee ventures” (Variety.com, 14 Mar 2004). The smaller networks, namely UPN and the WB, are known as netlets, “Model […] is within striking distance of Buffy’s UPN-best 18-34 and total-viewer marks, set with that series’ two-hour netlet preem in October 2001” (Variety.com, 25 Feb 2004).

Job titles in the entertainment industry have their Variety slanguage equivalents as well. Film directors are helmers. Writers are scribes, scribblers, or scripters. Writer-directors are hyphenates, after the hyphenated title; “‘The first thing I did was call my dad,’ said Seabiscuit hyphenate Gary Ross, who added both a writing and a best pic nom to his Oscar repertoire” (28 Jan 2004, p. 23). Scribes, scribblers, scripters, and hyphenates are typically members of the scribe house, or the Writer’s Guild of America. Those in front of the camera are thesps.

The paper uses similar terms for the music industry. Singers are thrushes; “Pact with Duff comes not long after the thesp/thrush inked a 2004-2005 comedy pilot deal with CBS” (15 Jan 2004, p. 6). A female singer is a chantoosie. Thrushes and chantoosies earn their living by chirping; “Dolly Parton, who joined Bonnie Raitt to sing ‘Angel From Montgomery,’ joked during a set change that she didn’t chirp the Raitt tune right” (Variety.com, 1 Oct 2003). Composers are either cleffers or tunesmiths, and dancers are either hoofers or terps; “There’ll never be another hoofer like her. And there’ll be dancing in heaven with Annie, Fred (Astaire), Gene (Kelly) and Donald (O’Connor)” (Variety.com, 22 Jan 2004).

All these thrushes and tunesmiths work for a diskery; “Studio and diskery execs embraced digital technology as a way of making scads of money by reformatting library titles in a new format” (Variety.com, 7 Dec 2003).

The talent are represented, or repped, by agents, or percenters; “the classic British TV nuclear thriller Edge of Darkness, helmed by Martin Campbell, one of the percenter’s clients” (Variety.com, 19 Jun 2002). Percenters work for a percentery, or talent agency.

Producers and other business people are exex; “Ex-exex sue Bertelsmann” (16 Sep 2003, p. 25). Types of exex include prexies, “USA Network prexy Doug Herzog is expected to ankle his post” (28 Jan 2004, p. 1) and prezes, “Mohammed and Khatab ‘died of multiple gunshot wounds,’ CNN prez Jim Walton said in a note to staff” (28 Jan 2004, p. 6). Both prexies and prezes are toppers, or to most other English speakers, presidents; “Vivendi Universal officially withdrew its case against former topper Jean-Marie Messier” (28 Jan 2004, p. 8). The executive in charge of a production is a showrunner, “All three—as well as Jerry Bruckheimer—will be exec producers on CSI: New York, with Zuiker serving as showrunner” (16 Jan 2004, p. 38).

All of these are simply seeking to acquire and entertain an aud; “But Paar was very much the center of the show, riveting auds even when he talked about himself” (28 Jan 2004, p. 2). Auds that are riveted usually engage in heavy rounds of mitting, or applause; “They garnered the heftiest mitting of the festival, plus three standing ovations” (Variety.com, 9 Jun 1992).

Oscar season brings its own set of slang terms to the fore. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is the Acad; “Acad voters sometimes overlooked big studio pics in favor of smaller films” (28 Jan 2004, p. 1). The best films of the year receive nods; “Aussie Naomi Watts, who garnered a nod from the Acad for her perf in 21 Grams” (28 Jan 2004, p. 23), or noms; “New Line’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King led the charge with 11 noms” (28 Jan 2004, p. 1). Before the Oscars are awarded, all the nommed films are distributed to Acad members in the form of taped or DVD screeners. The annual broadcast of the Academy Award ceremony is the Oscarcast and the other various award shows that are broadcast in the Spring are generally dubbed kudocasts.

The Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction prompted this headline about concerns of FCC fines for misbehavior at the award shows: “MORE NIPPLE RIPPLES Kudocasts scramble; pols eye increased fines” (6 Feb 2004, p. 7).

The production process garners its share of slanguage too. Studios evaluate potential projects by giving them a script-see; “Luhrmann’s bigscreen return, Alexander the Great for U and DreamWorks and starring Leonardo Di Caprio (his Romeo+Juliet star), gets another script-see in February” (15 Jan 2004, p. 1). If the studio likes the script, it may greenlight the project. The person charge of the business side of a film or TV production doesn’t just produce it, they exec produce it. Once the business groundwork is laid, the real work begins and the film is lensed; “U.S. producers will lense thriller Genesis Code in Brazil” (Variety.com, 10 Mar 2004).

When a film is finished it is released for sneak previews or sneaks, “Bad Boys II arrested a beefy $621,000 on 83 [screens] in Sweden and $469,000 on 66 in Norway, including sneaks” (16 Sep 2003, p. 27). Shortly after sneaks, the film bows or has a preem, premiere, in the theater chains, or circuits; “Loews Cineplex is partnering with marketing company BrandGames on a promo to mark the circuit’s 100th anniversary” (16 Jan 2004, p. 12). Circuits are also known as distribs, distribberies, and exhibs. There are many different types of theaters where the films are unspooled. A hardtop is an indoor movie theater; compare that with the drive-in ozoner, “Noncompeting pic will unspool in the Swiss town’s giant Piazza Grande ozoner” (Variety.com, 28 Jul 1999).

There are the arthouses. And film festivals are dubbed sprocket operas by the paper, “There’s that strange but unmistakable whiff of evolution in the air as the world’s best-known sprocket opera, the Cannes Film Festival, enters its 52nd edition” (Variety.com, 10 May 1999).

The goal of all this activity is to have a megapic, or big-budget motion picture; “inspired by scribe-helmer Stephen Sommer’s monster megapic” (16 Sep 2003, p. 1). The hope is to make lots of money at the box office, or B.O., “Oscar’s famous B.O. bounce applies primarily to best-pic nominees and winners” (28 Jan 2004, p. 22). A movie that carries with it high income expectations for the studio is a tentpole; “Universal’s summer 2004 tentpole Van Helsing won’t open for another eight months” (16 Sep 2003, p. 1).

After the theater run, the film is released to homevid; “Lorber Media has joined forces with U.K. distrib 3DD Entertainment to launch a U.K. homevid-DVD label” (28 Jan 2004, p. 6). And if the film is really successful, it will succumb to sequel-itis; “Increasingly, survival in movies and TV is going to require similar foresight, not just the regular bouts of ‘sequel-itis’ to which networks and studios have grown accustomed” (28 Jan 2004, p. 2).

Instead of B.O., television toppers are primarily concerned with demo, or demographics; “‘Idol’s’ appeal stretched to viewers outside the 18–49 demo” (28 Jan 2004, p. 12). Some programming is aimed at children and those in that demo are called anklebiters; “If its auds are limited to anklebiters, the ‘Pet’ opening could be capped at the single-digit millions over three days” (16 Jan 2004, p. 43). Anklebiters typically watch TV on Saturday in the ayem, or a.m.; “Its ayem kids block bowed Saturday” (17 Sep 2003, p. 15).

One of the major factors in determining the ratings for various demos is the sked, which can also be a verb; “The […] production is skedded to begin next year” (28 Jan 2004, p. 5). Shows that are on in the early or late evening are fringe, from their position in relation to prime time; “Stations are quickly adding Ryan to their highly visible early fringe time slots” (16 Sep 2003, p. 5). TV series are skeins or, if the show is aired daily, strips; “Show had the usual halo affect [sic] on the Fox sked as new […] skein My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance opened big on Monday” (28 Jan 2004, p. 12).

The individual episodes are segs; “No word yet on how many segs [he] will appear in” (15 Jan 2004, p. 14).

New skeins are either rookies or frosh; “After a strong start last week, Stephen King’s frosh drama Kingdom Hospital suffered the Nielsen version of a cardiac arrest Wednesday night, losing a horrific 35% of its premiere audience” (Variety.com, 11 Mar 2004). The collegiate metaphor is continued in shows that survive their first year, which are called sophomores or sophs.

Successful shows hope to cash in on the lucrative syndication or syndie market; “Warner Bros. is busily working on upgrades of its syndie sophomore The Ellen DeGeneres Show” (16 Jan 2004, p. 38). Shows that aren’t successful are candidates for revamping; “The necessary revamp comes as ABC and Touchstone execs announced Tuesday that the show […] will go on” (17 Sep 2003, p. 1).

Most people know that skeins begin with a pilot, but they may not know that Variety has terms for various types of pilots. A backdoor pilot is one filmed as a standalone movie, so it can be broadcast even if it is not picked up as a series. A busted pilot is one which the networks don’t pick up to become a series. If a show’s creator is lucky or a savvy negotiator, he can get a put pilot, one that carries substantial contractual penalties for the network if it is not aired—nearly a guarantee that it will be picked up as a series; “The WB has given one of its largest put pilot commitments ever to an autobiographical half-hour family comedy” (17 Sep 2003, p. 1).

Show biz is first and foremost a biz; it is not all stars and glamour, and Variety is not a glamour paper. At its heart it is a business paper, more interested, for example, in Ben and J.Lo’s box office than in their romance. Variety’s slanguage reflects this as well. All the entertainment companies, the congloms, seek to earn coin; “but it was coin—not the potential merger—that ultimately led to the Peacock landing the project” (16 Sep 2003, p. 29). Ducats is another term for money, but it is also used to mean tickets for a show (which is in some sense the same thing); “the skull and crossbones movie took in double the ducats ($70 million) its closest rival did on opening weekend” (Variety.com, 21 Dec 2003); “Ducats, sold online at vegas.com, allow patrons entry to the concert and provide front-of-the-line entrance to nightclubs” (Variety.com, 3 Dec 2003).

The total amount taken in by a movie is referred to as the cume, short for cumulative total; “Studio figures pic’s re-energized theatrical campaign could add more than $15 million to pic’s current $59 cume.” (28 Jan 2004, p. 22). To earn a large cume, a film must be both hotsy, strong at the box office, and have legs, a long performance run; “The long, not so hotsy, Good Friday weekend put a damper on 1994 grosses” (Variety.com, 4 Apr 1994); “Older-skewing pics usually don’t open big, but this one will have legs judging by its 11% soph sesh improvement in Mexico and its resilience in Australia” (Variety.com, 15 Feb 2004). Box office figures are often improved when a film is nominated for an award. When this happens, the film is said to have received a bounce; “Academy Award winners enjoy the biggest B.O. bounce from Oscar’s trampoline when they were released at the end of the calendar year” (28 Jan 2004, p. 22).

Hollywood is also a huge marketing and publicity machine. Variety refers to this as ad-pub, a clipping of advertising and publicity. Ad-pub attempts to boost, or promote, the studios' products in an attempt to achieve boffo results at the box office. Ad-pub can appeal directly to theater-goers through television commercials, or blurbs, “Is blurb bang really worth Super bucks?” (headline, referring to Superbowl ads, 1 Feb 2004, p. 1). Or it can attempt to generate buzz indirectly by enthusing, “Mayor Michael Bloomberg enthused about the trio’s efforts to bolster the city” (15 Jan 2004, p. 36), to crix, or critics, and journos; “Crucified by local crix, film still managed a moderate first-week tally late February” (Variety.com, 7 Mar 2004). Those who do ad-pub work are praisers and public relations firms are praiseries. Another term for ad-pub is tubthumping; “The pic’s helmer, Vadim Perelman, was back in the former Soviet Union to tubthump the Russian release of film” (Variety.com, 7 Mar 2004).

One should not think from all this that Variety’s use of language is sloppy or haphazard. The slanguage is a house style and the paper rigidly adheres to using its own, and only its own, jargon terms. It does not permit non-Variety slang to intrude. Where it does use a general slang term, like most other papers and journals it, somewhat ironically given its extensive use of in-house slang, uses quotes to denote that this is a non-standard word;

“Skein, tentatively titled The Player, will take an ethnically diverse group of young singles and test whether they have the ‘player’ skills needed to find love (or the reality TV version thereof) of mansions, expensive cars, and exclusive parties;” (16 Jan 2004, p. 5); “those who simply think they’ve got ‘game’” (16 Jan 2004, p. 5).

Variety’s slanguage marks the paper as one of the most distinctive publications in the English language. A few style rules and heavy use of a particular slang glossary creates the aura of celebrity and glitterati. By reading more like a gossip column than a business magazine, Variety brings zest and zing to the world of contracts and business deals.

[David Wilton is the editor of the online newsletter “A Way With Words.” His website is www.wilton.net.]

Mongo No Like Legging: Family Expressions Deserving Wider Recognition

Jessy Randall, Colorado Springs, Colorado

In 1962, Allen Walker Read published an article entitled “Family Words in English” (American Speech Vol. 37, No. 1, February 1962, pp. 5-12). In it, he gathered together a number of expressions not found in dictionaries but used within nuclear or extended families, sometimes across generations. Thirteen years later, an abridged version of that article appeared in this magazine (VERBATIM Vol. 1/4, 1975). Another thirteen years passed, and Paul Dickson’s Family Words: The Dictionary for People Who Don’t Know a Frone from a Brinkle was published (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1988, reviewed in this magazine by Laurence Urdang). Now, on the occasion of the publication of the 30th volume of VERBATIM, we figured it was time for another update.

You won’t find these words and expressions in any dictionary—yet they are in use by at least two people in the world, more often a half-dozen or more, sometimes spread over wide geographic regions and spreading further with the travel of the each generation. Most of these expressions undoubtedly will die out, but one or two deserving ones may perhaps survive into the next century. And, as Read put it, “Such material should be watched by the lexicologist for its value in showing tendencies in the language. The family is the matrix in which we see the bubbling up of linguistic experimentation.”

A word about my extremely unscientific methods: I asked my own relatives, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances for examples of family expressions, and asked them to ask their own people, and so on, and so on. I also used a Salon.com “Table Talk” discussion on the subject—“Embiggen the Language,” October 5, 2004. I discounted expressions that I considered to be inside jokes or simply funny family sayings rather than long-lived expressions that carry actual meaning. The expressions that made the final cut were those that I found truly useful, even necessary—the ones that might find wider usage if only people knew about them.

Some respondents sent expressions that turned out to be more general slang, and I didn’t include those, with three exceptions: F.H.B., Beedo system, and padiddle.

Many of the family expressions respondents sent have to do, unsurprisingly, with family matters—it makes sense that a family might invent and prolong an expression that is of particular use. One of the longest-lived such expressions, F.H.B., cited by Read in 1962 as already generations old, is a perfect example. F.H.B. stands for “family hold back.” At least two of my respondents sent this abbreviation, believing it to be the invention of their own families. But it dates back to at least the mid-19th century and has made it into the Oxford English Dictionary: “F.H.B., family hold back (a colloq. intimation to the members of a family that their guests have first claim on the course or helping about to be served),” with an example from 1911: “She murmured to such of the family as were within earshot the mystic formula, ‘F.H.B.!'”

One respondent sent an expression he’d heard from his grandmother: beedo system, used to describe any kind of assembly line work. If she needed a chore done by the respondent and his brothers, she would say, “What we need is a beedo system!” and organize the work into smaller tasks, one per brother. The respondent once asked his granny about the term, and she said it was something she remembered her mother saying.

It turns out this is not, however, a family expression. Tillie Olson’s novel Yonnondio, written in the 1930s, contains a reference to the dismal Beedo system: “Choreographed by Beedo, the B system, speed-up stopwatch, convey. Music by rasp crash screech knock steamhiss thud machinedrum. Abandon self, all ye who enter here. Become component part, geared, meshed, timed, controlled.” A footnote in the 1974 reprint defines Beedo as “a speed-up system of the 1920s.” The term is not in the Oxford English Dictionary or any of the dozen or so specialized dictionaries I checked, but nevertheless, it’s not a family expression.

Several respondents sent padiddle, a word for a car with one broken headlight or a game played on car trips at night. Padiddle-spotters get to make a wish, punch a sibling, or kiss a car-mate, depending on whom you ask. (There are complicated forms of padiddle in which points are scored for various types of vehicles, and even—I was scandalized to learn—a version of strip-padiddle.) But padiddle is not a family word, at least not any more. According to the Word for the Wise Archive at Merriam-Webster Online (www.merriam-webster.com), “Plenty of padiddle-players believe the term was born in their own families, but folks from Maine claim padiddle hails from Down East, and some baby boomers remember it as 1960s slang.”

Speaking of car games, one respondent told me that her family has special words for mean things children do to each other in the back seat: tickle torture, knee-knockers, silly-shoulders (squeezing one’s sibling’s shoulders very hard, digging into the flesh with all five fingers), and, most distinctively, fleeb-flickers (snapping one’s middle finger to the back of one’s sibling’s ear).

Children are the source of several odd and/or catchy expressions. Some of these are fairly straightforward: Doo-bah for blueberry, for example, or naptop, a child’s mixture of nap and laptop, because her mother used the laptop in bed. The most puzzling family word sent to me would have to be hunnanooney. The respondent’s brother used this word in place of elephant “for reasons now obscure.” I should say so—but the term has enjoyed regular use in that particular family for decades. Other expressions used by children and then by whole families include by my lone (a blended or portmanteau expression made by combining by myself and alone or on my own), it’s no mind (it’s no problem and I don’t mind), disastrophe (disaster and catastrophe). Cold, as a verb, seems like a very useful expression—a child in one family will touch you with something cold, like a sippy cup or a can of soda, and then say she has colded you.

The same child who coined colding uses kee kee for kitty, and now the whole family uses this term for a bunch of cat hair on furniture or clothing (as in, “Let me get that kee kee for you”). There seems to be a need for a word like this—another respondent told me that in her family they use goo-ga or goo-gag to mean an unidentifiable substance someplace where you don’t want it to be, as in “Eww, get this goo-gag off the table!”

Other kiddy expressions add to the family language in some way, filling a void left by regular English. For example, one respondent told me that her use of culture to describe a theatrical performance, visit to a museum, or other cultural experience, caught on. It went like this:

“Many years ago, when I was about eight, my mom and step-dad took me to a play with some of their friends. At the play, one of them asked me if this was my first time at the theater. I said, ‘Oh, no, this is my third culture this year.’

To this day, my family refers to going to plays or museums or stuff like that as getting a culture, as in “I went to New York and got three cultures.” You can probably tell from this that we are a family who does not get many cultures.”

Children can originate a family expression by what they say, what they are (nieblings, a gender-neutral word made by combining nieces, nephews, and siblings, is a truly great family invention), and also what they do. In Mo Willems’s 2004 picture book Knuffle Bunny, a little girl called Trixie goes boneless as a form of resistance. My own two-year-old did the same thing, but we called it a sit-down strike.

And then, of course, there’s the doo-doo they do. A number of respondents had special family euphemisms for dirty diapers. In many families, a child simply has a diaper. In others, the child does a diaper, or does a big diaper. I remember a small child in a novel who does a big job. One family uses a major event, as in “There’s a major event going on at present all over the changing table.” Other expressions in this vein include There’s a foul wind blowin’ and Time for an oil change. In my own family, we have another toilet-centered expression: Aunt Clara, shouted out if someone makes a trip to the bathroom just as everyone is being called to dinner. Apparently, my Great Aunt Clara—whom I never met—was known for doing this, and now she lives on in this expression.

Many family expressions derive from personal names. One respondent told me that her family uses the term Henrietta as discreet shorthand for “your tag is sticking out.” This comes from the Elaine May character in the 1971 film A New Leaf, who forgets to remove a tag from a dress. (Walter Matthau removes it for her in probably the funniest scene in the movie.)

This same family also uses RoseMiriam, an expression that means you think you’ve heard a telephone or doorbell ring but you really haven’t, after a woman who was always sending her husband to answer nonexistent doorbell-rings. Another respondent confessed that in her family, doing an Adriane is spilling your dinner down the front of your outfit the first time you wear it.

Another name-originated family expression is Henry, Denny’s brother, who is evoked when you suspect someone is stating a guess as fact. To paraphrase the respondent’s explanation: The family’s local coffee shop, Denny’s (not the chain—it was owned by a guy named Denny) was closing. The short order cook was an elderly man named Henry. The respondent felt sorry for Henry, thinking no one would hire a really old short-order cook. Her husband said not to worry, that Henry was Denny’s brother and he would be well taken care of. The respondent told all her neighborhood friends not to worry about Henry, because he was Denny’s brother. Eventually it came to light that Henry was not Denny’s brother—the respondent’s husband had come to that conclusion because he thought Henry looked like Denny (which, according to the respondent, he didn’t).

It turns out that we really need a word for this kind of thing—another respondent told me that her family uses the term toyb, pronounced “toyeb.” This is an acronym for talking out your butt. Here is an abridged version of the respondent’s explanation:

“About fourteen years ago, my sister, my brother, his new girlfriend, and I were sitting on the porch, discussing the age-old question of why the moon looks so much bigger near the horizon than high up in the sky. A number of reasons were stated with absolute conviction, with great debate over who was right. My future sister-in-law, quiet through most of the discussion, suddenly leaned forward, looked at me and my siblings, and stated with shocking clarity: “None of you has a clue what the right answer is, do you? You’re all acting like you know, without a doubt, what the answer is, but all you’re doing is talking out of your butts!” Awed silence in the face of the terrible truth. Ever since then, if someone starts to pontificate in the way that all our family members do about some issue armed with very little actual knowledge, someone else will mutter quietly under their breath, “toyb, toyb, toyb …” It tends to deflate even the most confident.”

Several of the family expressions I received have to do with sharing—and not sharing. One family uses cake to mean ‘cash on hand,’ with a rather telling example: “Do you have any cake I can borrow?” In another family, a slurp is a large sip of someone else’s drink, as in “Can I have a slurp?” In a third family, if you want to hold your spot on the couch, you claim eggies on it. The origin of this is not clear, but it may be that your spot on the couch is as forbidden as if eggs were on it and would break on the seat-stealer’s bottom. (Speaking of bottoms, one respondent tells me that in her family, foon is used as an affectionate word for that body part, akin to the Yiddish tuchus or tushie.)

The only exhortation I received, Man up!, was invented by a pair of brothers and means something like ‘quit whining and be a man,’ but is used in low-key circumstances—“Why don’t you just man up and mow the lawn?” One brother had a hat made for the other brother with this expression emblazoned upon it, which draws confused looks.

Some object words. Woogies are hair rollers or, strangely enough, wax and cotton earplugs—as in, “I can’t hear you, I’ve got my woogies in.” A futta-futta is a spatula, dustpan, or similar kitchen tool, because, according to the respondent, “once one of us couldn’t think of the word for spatula, so all flat things that pick things up with a futta-futta motion are futta-futtas.” My husband’s family has long referred to cereal as pop-nut scrummies, not knowing exactly why. When I googled this term in various ways to make sure it was not slang, I had this exchange: “Your search—popnut scrummies—did not match any documents. Did you mean: popnot scrummies?” Momentarily experiencing a surge of hope that I might finally bring the great pop-nut scrummy mystery to rest, I clicked yes. Google responded: “Your search—popnot scrummies—did not match any documents.” Sigh.

Probably the most unusual and distinctive family word I received was a secret word invented by a family so that if one of them died, the remaining members could go to a medium and test the validity of the séance. This word was carefully guarded, of course: only the three family members (father, mother, and daughter) could know about the word. It was made by combining the initials of the family members: Narama (Nancy, Robert, and Meg Albert). [At the request of the respondent, I have substituted a different secret word and set of names here.]

And now to our title expression, Mongo no like legging, used in one family to draw attention to grammar errors in signs or other public texts. The respondent and his wife worked at a Barnes and Noble where a posted employee dress code included the admonition “No legging for woman.” This morphed into Mongo no like legging, called out when one sees a sign reading, for example, “Buy fresh strawberry.” Why Mongo? This word probably deserves its own article. Briefly, it is a group of people living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire; the language they speak; a Mongolian monetary unit; an adjective meaning ‘big’; a slang term for anything salvaged from the trash; a derogatory term for a person with Down’s Syndrome (from the antiquated word Mongoloid); a skateboarding style in which the skater pushes off with the front-positioned foot; the fictional planet of the Flash Gordon series; and a large, farting, bad-grammar using character in Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles—thus its use in Mongo no like legging.

[Jessy Randall is the Curator of Special Collections at Colorado College. She has written for VERBATIM about Harry Potter, asses, and jokes, but not all in the same article. Her website is personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall/.]

EPISTOLAE

Raymond Humphries (VERBATIM 29/4) is wrong, the smallest coin in the UK was the half-farthing. Here’s a short history and picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_coin_Half_Farthing.

[Jim McKelvey, mckelvey@maskull.com]

In his informative “Verlan: The French Pig Latin” in the Autumn 2005 edition of VERBATIM, J.J. Davis mentions that “Some words have even been ’re-verlanned.' An interesting example of this phenomenon is beur, which designates a person born in France of immigrant parents from the former colonies of northern Africa (the Maghreb). The word Arabe is transformed to rebeu in its first verlanization (taking the usual liberties with vowels), then, in a second pass, beur.

[Alex Humez, alexhumez@juno.com]

Confessions of a Verbivore

Richard Lederer, San Diego, California

I am a wordstruck, word bethumped, word besotted, wordaholic, unrepentant verbivore.

Carnivores eat flesh and meat; piscivores eat fish; herbivores consume plants and vegetables; verbivores devour words. I am such a creature. My whole life I have feasted on words—ogled their appetizing shapes, colors, and textures; swished them around in my mouth; lingered over their many tastes; let their juices run down my chin. During my adventures as a fly-by-the-roof-of-the-mouth, user-friendly wizard of idiom, I have met thousands of other wordaholics, logolepts, lexicomaniacs, and verbivores, folks who also eat their words. You are almost certainly a verbivore, or you wouldn’t be reading this thirtieth-anniversary issue of VERBATIM.

What is there about words that makes a language person love them so? The answers are probably as varied as the number of verbivores themselves. There are as many reasons to love words as there are people who love them. How do we love thee, language? Let us count the ways.

Some word people are intrigued by the birth and life of words. They become enthusiastic, ebullient, and enchanted when they discover that enthusiastic literally means ‘possessed by a god,’ ebullient ‘boiling over, spouting out,’ and enchanted ‘singing a magic song.’ They are rendered starry-eyed by the insight that disaster (dis-aster) literally means “ill-starred” and intoxicated by the information that intoxicated has poison in its heart. They love the fact that amateur is cobbled from the very first verb that all students of Latin learn —amo: ‘I love.’ The poet William Cowper once wrote of:

philologists who trace

A panting syllable through time and space,

Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark

To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah’s ark.

Wordsters of etymological persuasion love to track down the origins of phrases. Take “sitting in the catbird seat.” The expression was popularized by Red Barber, the colorful broadcaster for the Brooklyn Dodgers, who also spread the likes of “tearing up the pea patch” and rhubarb, used to mean ‘an argument on a baseball diamond.’ The Mississippi-born Barber once explained that “sitting in the catbird seat” was a Southern expression for which he had literally paid.

In a stud poker game Barber continually bluffed with a weak hand until he lost to an opponent who met every raise. According to Red, the winner, who held an ace showing and an ace in the hole, said, “Thanks for all those raises. From the start, I was sitting in the catbird seat.”

The catbird commands a good view from its lofty perch, but so do many other birds. My reading of ornithology books reveals that the catbird does not usually sit high up in branches, where it could get the best view, but rather lurks half-hidden in shrubbery. What’s so special about the catbird and its vantage point? Intrepid bird watchers, word botchers, and phrase-hunters will never rest until they track down the answer.

Still another denomination of verbivore sees words as collections of letters to be juggled, shuffled, and flipped. Lovers of logology—the art and craft of letter play—are spellbound by the fact that twentynine is spelled with straight letters made of straight lines only—twenty-nine of them, to be exact—and that ambidextrous is alphabetically ambidextrous. Its left half, ambide, uses letters from the left half of the alphabet, and its right half, xtrous, uses letters from the right half of the alphabet.

As RIDDLER REACHER (a full anagram for RICHARD LEDERER), I am here to tell you that the infinite variety of William Shakespeare’s characters, themes, and language is reflected in the many full anagrams of his name: I SWEAR HE’S LIKE A LAMP, WE ALL MAKE HIS PRAISE, HAS WILL A PEER? I ASK ME, and AH, I SPEAK A SWELL RIME.

Then there’s the breed of logophile who enjoys trying to turn the brier patch of pronoun cases, subject-verb agreement, sequence of tenses, and the indicative and subjunctive moods into a manageable garden of delight.

Throughout my life as a teacher, I have striven mightily to teach the difference between the verbs lie and lay. Lie means ‘to repose’; lay means ‘to put.’ Lie is intransitive; it never takes an object. Lay is transitive; it always takes an object. Pardon the fowl language, but a hen on its back is lying; a hen on its stomach may be laying—an egg.

Alas, all my efforts have been swept away by the Enron debacle. Here’s a little ditty I’ve written about the company that made an End Run around ethics. Please recall that the disgraced CEO of the company was Kenneth Lay:

TAKE THE MONEY ENRON

The difference between “lie” and “lay”

Has fallen into deep decay.

But now we know from Enron’s shame

That Lay and “lie” are just the same.

Among my favorite wordmongers are those who prowl the lunatic fringes of language, lunatic because the ancients believed that prolonged exposure to the moon (Latin luna) rendered one moonstruck, or daft. These recreational wordplayers wonder why we drive in a parkway and park in a driveway, why our nose can run and our feet can smell, why the third hand on a clock is called the second hand, and why, if adults commit adultery, infants don’t commit infantry. Why is it, they muse, that a man puts on a pair of pants but a woman puts on only one bra? Why is it that a man can call a woman a vision, but not a sight—unless his eyes are sore?

Finally, there are the legions of pundits, punheads, pun pals, pun-up girls, and pun-gents who tell of the Buddhist who said to the hot dog vendor, “Make me one with everything.” That’s the same Buddhist who never took Novocain when he had teeth extracted because he wished to transcend dental medication. These punderful verbivores become even bigger hot dogs when they tell about Charlemagne, who mustered his Franks and set out with great relish to assault and pepper the Saracens, but he couldn’t catch up. (Frankly, I never sausage a pun. It’s the wurst!)

Punnery is largely the trick of compacting two or more ideas within a single word or expression. Punnery challenges us to apply the greatest pressure per square syllable of language. Punnery surprises us by flouting the law of nature that pretends that two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Punnery is an exercise of the mind at being concise. Punnery is a rewording experience.

A good pun is like a good steak—a rare medium well done. Cardinal Richelieu once wrote that “the pen is mightier than the sword.” I would update that pronouncement: “The pun is mightier than the sword, and these days you are more likely to run into a pun than a sword.”

Incorrigible pun-gent that I am (don’t incorrige me!), I love sharpening my pun cells for the moment when everything comes together to form an incisive and contextual prey on words:

During my first tour of our San Diego Wild Animal Park, I went to an area where giraffes lean forward over a parapet and accept food from visitors. I suggested to the keeper that the area be named Giraffic Park. Watching an Imax film about volcanoes from Fiji to Hawaii, I noted the title, Ring of Fire, turned to my long-suffering wife, and commented, “They’ve missed the best title for this movie—Ash from a Hole in the Ground.” At an airport security area I removed and then placed my shoes in one of the small tubs because my size 14s are supported by large steel shanks that unfailingly set bells a ringing. When, after a long wait, the attendant finally returned my shoes, I thanked her for “the shoe shank redemption.” I once told a companion, who is a great Shakespeare lover, “Don’t go away. I’ll be back in two Shakespeares of a Lamb’s Tale!” I love pushing the envelope of language, even if it causes those around me to be out of sorts and go postal.

Language derives from lingua, “tongue,” so it is no surprise that many verbivores care deeply about the pronunciation of words. The sounding noo-kyuh-lur has received much notoriety because a number of presidents from Dwight David Eisenhower to George W. Bush have spoken the word that way. A great many people riding our fair planet simply cannot hear the difference between noo-kyuh-lur and noo-klee-uhr.

Noo-kyuh-lur is an example of metathesis, the transposition of internal sounds, as in Ree-luh-tur for Realtor, joo-luh-ree for jewelry, lahr-niks for larynx, and, more subtly cumf-ter-bull for comfortable. But while the metathesis cumf-ter-bull (in which the er and the t have been transposed) is fully acceptable and entrenched in our language, cultivated speakers generally consider noo-kyuh-lur, ree-lah-tur, and their ilk atrocities. The San Diego Union-Tribune recently polled its readers to find out the grammar and pronunciation abuses that most seismically yanked their chains and rattled their cages.

Noo-kyuh-lur was the crime against English mentioned by the greatest number of respondents. Noo-kyuh-lur made them go ballistic, even noo-klee-ur. Despite its proliferation, noo-kyuh-lur has failed to gain respectability. Noo-kyuh-lur may be a sad fact of life, but resistance to it is hardly a lost cause. Although we hear it from some prominent people, it remains a much-derided aberration.

How do we love thee, language? I believe the way that counts the most is the iron link between words and human beings. Has it ever struck you how human words are? Like people, words are born, grow up, get married, have children, and even die. They may be very old, like man and wife and home. They may be very young, as veggies, bad-hair day, soccer mom, and phat. They may be newly born and struggling to live, as dead presidents, headbanger, identity theft, and McJob. Or they may repose in the tomb of history, as leechcraft, the Anglo-Saxon word for the practice of medicine, and murfles, a long defunct word for freckles or pimples.

Our lives are filled with people and words, and in both cases we are bound to be impressed with their vast numbers and infinite variety. Some words, like OK, are famous all over the world. Others, like foozle ‘a bungling golf stroke’ and groak ‘to stare at other people’s food, hoping that they will offer you some’, are scarcely known, even at home.

As with people, words come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, backgrounds, and personalities. They may be very small, like a and I. They may be very large, like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a 45-letter hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian word for black lung disease.

Some words are multinational in their heritage, as remacadamize, which is Latin, Celtic, Hebrew, and Greek in parentage. Some come of Old English stock, as sun and moon and grass and goodness. Some have a distinctly continental flavor—kindergarten, lingerie, spaghetti. Others are unmistakably American —stunt and baseball.

Words, like people go up and down in the world. Some are born into low station and come up in the life. With the passing of time, they may acquire prestige (which used to mean ‘trickery’) and glamour (which began life as a synonym for ‘grammar’).

Others words slide downhill in reputation, such as the adjectives awful, artificial, vulgar, villainous, boorish, homely, notorious, egregious, smug, and silly, each of which once possessed a complimentary or neutral meaning.

Words like remunerative, encomium, and perspicacious are so dignified that they can intimidate us, while others, like booze, burp and blubber, are markedly inelegant in character. Some words, such as ecdysiast, H. L. Mencken’s Greek-derived name for a stripteaser, love to put on fancy airs; others, like humongous and palimony, are winkingly playful. Certain words strike us as beautiful, like luminous and gossamer, others as rather ugly—guzzle and scrod; some as quiet—dawn and dusk, others as noisy—thunder and crash.

That words and people so resemble each other should come as no surprise. Whether the ground of your being is religion or science, you find that language is the hallmark, the defining characteristic that distinguishes humankind from the other creatures that walk and run and crawl and swim and fly in our world.

In the Genesis creation story that so majestically begins the Bible, we note the frequency and importance of verbs of speaking: “And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. … And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. … And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters. … And God called the firmament Heaven.” [Emphasis mine.]

Note those verbs of speaking and naming. God doesn’t just snap his finger to bring the things of the universe into existence. He speaks them into being and then names each one. And what happens when God creates Adam?: “And out of the ground the lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”

In other words, Adam does what God had done: He names things. Perhaps this is what the Bible means when we read, “And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” Like God, man is a speaker and a namer.

If your mythos is science, you believe that many early hominid species, some of them co-existing, preceded the tenure of Homo sapiens. Today we take for granted that we are the only hominid on Earth, yet for at least four million years many hominid species shared the planet, including Homo habilis, Homo erectus and, of course, Homo neanderthalensis.

What made us different? What allowed us to survive? The answer is on the tip of our tongues. While some of these other species possessed the physical apparatus for speech, only with Homo sapiens did speech tremble into birth. The appearance of language made us human, and our humanity ensured the survival of language. We human beings have always possessed language because before he had it we were not fully human and the sounds that escaped from the holes in hominid faces were not fully language. Not only do we human beings possess language; we ARE language.

[St. Martin’s Press has just published Comma Sense: A Fun-damental Guide to Punctuation, by Richard Lederer and John Shore. Richard Lederer’s website can be found at http://www.verbivore.com.]

LUDUS

Longtime subscribers Bob and Bettylynn Allen write to suggest a new contest: coming up with funny or clever terms of venery (as those in An Exaltation of Larks). On a recent trip they passed the time doing this and came up with “a raucous of crows,” among others.

Submit your best ones to the Editor at editor@verbatimmag.com, before January 15. (Submissions are also welcome by postal mail.) I’ll put up the best ones on the website and let people vote in an online poll. The winner will receive a copy of More Weird and Wonderful Words, and runners-up will get other prizes (yet to be determined).

Terms already in An Exaltation of Larks will be disqualified. Employees of VERBATIM are not eligible (but contributors are!).

I expect a prize of contestants …

Emails to an Etymologist

Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol

The recent publication of my book on etymology¹ led to many broadcast interviews, as a result of which I now seem to be on a list for people wanting to email me with weird ideas for programmes (you’ve heard of A-list celebrities? Mine must surely be the F-list, the letter being all too appropriate). One recent email proposed I advise a freelance television company on making a series that would ask people to send in suggestions for the origin of some intriguingly obscure expression, which a panel would then pass judgement on. Or something like that—much of my will to live ebbed away part-way through the pitch. My book may be about popular etymology, the way people invent stories to explain the origins of puzzling words and phrases, but my mind retreated in confusion at the suggestion we might encourage more of it.

As I run a popular Web site and send out umpteen thousand copies of a newsletter by email each week (and get about a thousand replies), I have come to expect the occasional incoming message that puts forward an odd ideas about word origins. A good example happened in Halloween week, after I’d written a piece about the origin of What the Sam Hill as a euphemism for invoking the devil. Several subscribers emailed with the thought that its link with Satan might be through the Celtic festival of Samhain. Samhain—Sam Hill, what could be clearer? One problem—leaving aside the total lack of evidence—is that it only works in print, since Samhain is said nothing like the way it’s spelled.

Those subscribers can be grouped with correspondents who suggested in all seriousness that bodacious comes from the name of the Celtic queen who almost defeated the Romans at the battle of Colchester in AD 62. Or the earnest correspondent who pointed out that green room is what surfers call the inside of a perfect wave and that it must therefore be related to the source of the theatrical sense. Or the one who noted that during the First World War soldiers serving in the trenches became prone to lice and that they would purge their clothing with soap or flame to remove the beasts, which they called chats—hence chatting for their conversation as they did it.

Another emailer argued that easy as pie originated in Australia around 1920 from the Maori word pai, meaning “good.”

Yet another suggested that pull up your socks derives from an old theatrical tradition in which actors literally pulled their socks up to indicate a change in mood from comedy to tragedy. One writer told me a disabled friend found the word handicapped offensive because he believed that in the past a person with a physical disability would be forced to stand on a street corner and beg for money cap in hand.

What interests me about these stories, leaving aside the resource they provide for folkloric investigation, is that many of them have features in common. One major misconception seems to be that if one stares hard enough at a word for long enough, its history will become obvious. It’s also clear that the concept of looking things up is alien to their inventors. Most stories come in after I’ve published what we know about a word, including where and when it was first recorded. Writers with odd theories disregard this evidence: the story’s the thing and facts are unimportant. This is linked to another characteristic: an ignorance, not only of history, but of the idea of history. History so often seems to be regarded as an amorphous undifferentiated bundled-together happening in which the Wars of the Roses sit alongside the French Revolution, or Shakespeare was a near contemporary of Wordsworth (assuming that the writer knows anything about any of these). A further mistake is to assume that any coincidence of spelling or sound between a word in another language and an English one represents a real connection, no matter how unlikely. A subset of this conviction is that all words are Hebrew in origin.

One of the stranger but more common beliefs is that almost any word is an acronym. As others have made clear in previous issues, this is almost never true, to the extent that the first rule of etymology is never to believe an acronymic origin unless presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. Applying this rule quickly disposed of e-mailers who firmly told me that digs, a British word for lodgings, is actually from ‘Dine-In GuestS’, that the outmoded Australian term wowser for an excessively puritanical person is an acronym of ‘We Only Want Social Evils Remedied’, that gaff, a British colloquialism for one’s place of residence, derives from ‘General Address For Friends’, that news is actually a telegraphic abbreviation for ‘North, East, South, and West’, and that hep is an anti-Semitic slogan from ‘Hierosolyma Est Perdita’, Jerusalem is lost.

To be any good at etymology you need to know a fair bit of history and understand something of the cultures of earlier places and periods, have a mind that’s tuned to what human beings are likely to do with language and how words evolve, have a good knowledge of the linguistic roots of English, and—most importantly—be prepared to put in a lot of boring deskwork researching origins. This was the message I tried to put over to the television researcher, without much success: that etymology isn’t an easy game for beginners to play. You don’t have to be professionally qualified (I’m not, nor are most lexicographers) but you do need to be well informed and be prepared to learn a lot before you can make a useful contribution.

Of course, it helps if you have thousands of subscribers who delightedly put you right about the slightest error. But that’s another story.

---

[Michael Quinion is the editor of the online newsletter World Wide Words. Visit his website at www.worldwidewords.org.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

KILLER DISEASE DOCTORS MISS [From the cover of Reader’s Digest, June 2005. Submitted by Louis Phillips, New York City.]

Many young people live in a Matrix worldin which there is often no consensual reality … Young people want more real-life gumption, moreinitiative, more stickability, just as prospectiveemployers and anxious governments do. Morefundamental even than the concern with literacy andnumeracy is the need to protect and develop youngpeople’s learnacy.”

[From ‘Learning to learn: a key goalin a 21st-century classroom’, by Professor Guy Claxton, submitted by Fabian Acker.]

OBITER DICTA

Alan H. Hartley, editor of Lewis and Clark Lexicon of Discovery (2004, Washington State University Press), has found these wonderful examples of unintentional wordplay in the journals of Lewis and Clark. Enjoy!

[ML is Meriwether Lewis, WC is William Clark; x.yyy are vol. and page in Moulton’s edition of the journals.]

The men…are still busily employed in dressing Elk’s skins for cloathing, they find great difficulty for the want of branes [23Jan06 ML 6.230] (animal brains were used for tanning leather)

we informed the indians that we knew of no releif for him [a paralyzed man]…I am confident that this would be an excellent subject for electricity and much regret that I have it not in my power to supply it. [25 May 06 ML 7.286] (electricity had come into vogue in recent decades for medical treatment)

Lanced the Leather boat, and found that it leaked a little [9 Jul 05 WC 4.371] (lance is an old form of launch)

the party much incomoded frequently with a Lax [winter 04-05 WC 3.481] (lax is diarrhea; commode–get it?)

Cap C Splintered the arm of the man which was broke. [28 Apr 06 WC? 7.178] (splinter is an old form of splint)

Murder! She Ejaculated

Edmund Conti, Summit, New Jersey

“When in Rome” by Ngaio Marsh is an example of what good writing is all about—detailed plotting, superb characterization, word pictures of Rome of la dolce vita. All combine—not in a roman a clef, but in a Roman cliffhanger. Before you run down to the library (you won’t find it at your local bookstore, it was published in 1971), let me tell you what’s in store (or in the library) for you.

Assorted characters including Mr. Sebastian Mailer, tour director and his patrons: Mr. Barnaby Grant, author; the Baron and Baroness Van der Veghel; Lady Bracely and her nephew, the Honorable Kenneth Dorne; Miss Sophy Jason, writer of children’s stories; Major Hamilton Sweet and Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, C.I.D.

Assorted characteristics including superannuated, junkie, bad-tempered, ultra-British, boisterous and extremely reticent—all applying variously to the assembled cast.

Italians everywhere including Il Questore Valdarno and sundry members of the Questura.

Italian phrases like basta, non l’ho fatto io, sciocchezze, ecco!

British phrases like Gawd!

Rome! the Piazza Colonna, Consolato Brittannico, the Pensione Gallico, the Spanish Steps.

And the writing. And what writing! Miss Marsh has you caught up in the exuberance of Roman life, the emotions, the sudden and vehement utterances. And all without the current fashionable use of explicit or erotic passages. But I can’t contain my excitement any longer. Let me take you on a tour of “When in Rome.”

Page 14: Barnaby pays for a glass of beer and we’re off.

“Here,” he said in basic Italian. “Keep the change.” The waiter ejaculated with evident pleasure.

Page 49: The tour is just starting.

“It’s obliging of you to talk to me,” Alleyn said. “I’ve just been, not exactly slapped back but slightly edged off by the Guest of Honour.”

“Nothing to what I was!” Sophy ejaculated.

Page 74: The tour continues and the writing flows.

Major Sweet left by one of the side doors. Alleyn disappeared behind the god, enthusiastically followed by the Van der Veghels. They could be heard ejaculating in some distant region.

Page 75: The plot thickens.

“Ah,” ejaculated Grant, “don’t remind me of that for God’s sake!”

Page 84: Mr. Mailer has disappeared and Father Denys can’t contain himself.

Father Denys clapped his hands to his forehead. “Violetta, is it!” he ejaculated. “ A terrible pest, that one, God forgive me, for she’s touched in her wits, poor creature.”

Page 87: Major Sweet learns that the tour will dine at the Giaconda.

“Good God!” the Major ejaculated. As well he might. The Giaconda is the most exclusive as it is undoubtedly the most expensive restaurant in Rome.

Page 88: Some mind-boggling and Major-boggling prose.

“Well!” the Major ejaculated. “I must say this is—ah—it seems—ah—” he boggled slightly.

Page 88: Wait, don’t turn that page yet.

There were more ejaculations and much talk of coincidence while Sophy turned over in her mind what she knew of the firm of Adriaan and Walker. . .

Page 104: Dinner is winding down but everyone is still wound up.

“If—and the chances I believe are remote—if Mr. Mailer should put in an appearance here”—Marco gave an ejaculation and a very slight wince.

Page 109: Dinner is over but the diners keep it up.

“Phew!” said the Major, who seemed to be stuck with this ejaculation.

Page 140: Everyone gets in on the act.

“Eccellenza!” the Questore ejaculated. “Scusi! Allow me.”

Page 145: More clues, but nothing gets lost in translation.

The Van der Veghels broke into scandalized ejaculations, first in their language and then in English.

Page 149: Who done it?

Sophy had given a little ejaculation.

Page 149: The butler? The Baron?

“I remember!” the Baron ejaculated. “I remember perfectly! It was when I took a picture of the group.”

Page 157: We’re coming to a climax. Again.

A savage-sounding but muted exchange followed. Finally Giovanni gave a sharp ejaculation. Chair legs grated on the pavement. A palm was slapped down on the table. Alleyn, greatly stimulated, squatted behind the ruin of a velvet chair and heard them go past.

Page 188: Sophy comes to some conclusions.

How different, Sophy thought, from the behaviour of women. “We would exclaim, gaze at each at each other, gabble, ejaculate, tell each other how we felt and talk about instinctive revulsions and how we’d always known, right along, that there was something.”

Page 194: Romans, doing as the Romans do.

A spate of Italian broke out at the other end. Bergami ejaculated and answered so rapidly that Alleyn could only just make out what he said.

Page 222: Last page. Last lines. A fitting climax.

“Look,” he said, “isn’t Rome lovely? The bells ring, the swallows rush about, the saints look down and the fountains play.”

“Lovely!” she agreed. “But all the same, strange things can happen under her skin.”

“And always have,” said Barnaby.

There it is. “When in Rome.” Cigarette?

[Edmund Conti’s most recent piece for VERBATIM was the poem “Voice Over” in XXIX/3.]

Blurts

(i)

Some gaffe has bubbled in my memory.

“You idiot!” I mutter, meaning me.

Somebody overhears me and feels meant.

Another bubble’s on its long ascent.

(ii)

Whispering “DEATH!”

is a waste of breath.

(iii)

My rule—Don’t talk to someone you can’t see—

may help me see that one or other hears.

It doesn’t stop blurts of apology

to teachers I’ve not seen in thirty years.

(iv)

Solo,

I bark Sorry! staccato

for an old peccadillo –

a sort of self-vendetta.

Recalling what I can’t recall

finds cracks of resolution

in battering the party-wall

edgeways with noise-pollution.

(v)

A blurt of the usual sort,

in a prayer, would stick out like a wart.

So in church, when an old thing went off in my head,

I converted the blurt to a silent stop dead –

and “The man’s half-asleep,” people thought.

(vi)

Another wordless blurt’s the thick-blink wince.

Perhaps it was your music that set ringing

the tripwire memories, alarmed long since;

I did not mean a slight upon your singing.

(vii)

Treading two steps in ten on words that trigger

the sort of memory that stops me dead,

I’m glad to find the English language bigger

than lists of what I wish I hadn’t said.

Indeed, if I went through the dictionary

on purpose to stain every word with me,

and Powerpointed the resulting story

to seminars on lexicography

(“CLEUGH I illiterately mispronounced,

NOUP I wrote in exams, under-prepared,

PORRET accompanied a cheque that bounced,

DRAN and I’ve just now realized why she glared”),

the words I’d left unstained would make the thing

so gappy as to be embarrassing.

[Aidan Baker]

How to Tawk Like a New Yawker

Charles Harrington Elster, San Diego, California

Some time ago I received an email from William Safire’s research assistant. “For a special issue on New York (a survival guide for newcomers and immigrants),” she wrote, “can you give Mr. Safire a rundown on New York–specific pronunciation and what might be the most difficult for new arrivals?”

When the language maven of The New York Times Magazine asks for your help, you don’t tell him where to get off the subway. You hop to it and do your best.

In a New York minute, I composed this reply:

You say you want to know what New Yawk Tawk might be most difficult for new arrivals, and I’m assuming you mean most difficult to understand rather than to master. Well, because New York speech is some of the speediest English on the planet, I’d say the first challenge for a New York newcomer would be simply distinguishing where one word ends and the next begins.

Particularly difficult to decipher are the many slurred exclamations—the various grunts, growls, and barks—for which New Yorkers are infamous. Here are some of the printable ones: whaddayanutz, whaddayatawkinabow, yagoddaprollumwiddat, the much-imitated fuggeddaboudid, and geddaddaheeuh. These mean “what are you, nuts?”; “what are you talking about” (typically pronounced without an interrogative inflection); “you got a problem with that?”; “forget about it”; and “get out of here” (which usually means “I don’t believe it” rather than “please leave”).

Some of my other favorite high-RPM New York Slurvianisms include smatter for “what’s the matter?”; omina or ongana for “I’m going to”; jeet for “did you eat?”; and alluhyuz for “all of you,” in which yuz (or yooz in a stressed position) is the New York equivalent of the Southern y’all.

The New Yorker’s propensity for slurvy pronunciation can sometimes be nothing short of miraculous. When I lived in New York, I remember how conductors on the Long Island Rail Road managed to slur the name of a certain station, Woodside, into the unintelligible wuss-eye (the eye of a wuss?).

New Yawk Tawk also features a diphthongal /aw/ sound that in heavy Nooyawkese sounds almost disyllabic. It’s impossible for me to transliterate this elongated /aw/ here, but ask a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker to pronounce talk, lawn, dog, coffee, or because and you will hear it. In fact, because could well serve as a shibboleth for identifying a New Yawk Tawker. In the purest Nooyawkese, it comes out almost like bee-KOO-uhz. Think of the /aw/ sound of fall, put a heavier /w/ in it, and you’ll come close. (This sound typically does not occur in frog and golf, as some non–New Yorkers believe. They are pronounced with the short /o/ of hot, the dentist’s /ah/).

Another notable characteristic of the New York accent that may confuse newcomers is the distinct way of pronouncing the consonant blend /th/. Father and mother often come out fahdda and mudda, with becomes wid or wit, and this and that becomes dis’n dat.

New Yorkers are also renowned r-droppers. Day eat wid a fawk (they eat with a fork), day wawk onna flaw (they walk on a floor), and day drink adda bah (they drink at a bar). The superintendent of their apartment building is da soopuh, and The New York Times is da paypuh. When newcomers attend a Mets or Yankees game, they will need to know that bee-uh-hee-uh! means “[I’m selling] beer here.”

I should note that among New Yorkers today, a strong New York accent can sometimes be a social liability. The substitution of /d/ for /th/ has long been considered particularly plebeian, and even r-dropping, once a hallmark of cultivated New York speech (remember FDR?), has become rather déclassé. Many upwardly mobile New Yorkers now pride themselves on sounding just like someone from Ohio or Wisconsin.

Finally, to understand what New Yorkers are talking about (tawkinabow), any newcomer unfamiliar with Basic Yinglish will need to take a crash course to grasp such classic locutions as shlep (to lug, carry), kvetch (complain, whine), shmuck (a dope, jerk, in Yiddish a penis), shmeer (to spread or a spread), and oy (an untranslatable exclamation that Leo Rosten describes as not a word but a vocabulary). In fact, one could reasonably argue that in New York City, Yinglish is everybody’s second language.

And, from one word maven to another, datzuhbowditfuddat (that’s about it for that).

For a good, concise rundown on the principles at work in New Yawkese, and especially Brooklynese, see American Talk by Robert Hendrickson (Penguin, 1986), pages 59-85.

[Charles Elster’s new novel, TEST OF TIME: A Novel Approach to the SAT and ACT” has just been published by Harcourt. His website is http://members.authorsguild.net/chelster/.]

Who Put the Nick in My Name?

Gloria Rosenthal, Valley Stream, New York

When I was 13 years old I did something nobody in my family had ever done before. My mother, sisters, brother and a horde of relatives could not understand how a member of this happy family could be so rebellious.

What had I done? I did not get tattooed, wear a nose ring or dye my hair purple. I simply refused to answer to my nickname.

Up to then I had been called by a warped version of “Gloria.” My brother was 16 months old and just learning to talk when I was born, and he mangled my name. Everyone in the family thought it was oh, so cute, so they all started to call me ___. Oops! Never mind; that’s what my mutiny was all about. I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life answering to a strange name given me by a kid we all called “Brother.”

Yes, we are a family of nicknames. My defiance bewildered them. After all, how could a clan of people called Brother, Babe, Bubbles, Sonny, Kutch, Rusty, Doll and Bunny have this alien, this … how you say … Gloria, in their ranks? They reacted the way my sister did when she, her husband, our brother and our cousin came to visit my husband Larry (his family sticks to birth names) and me at a campground where we had a trailer. The owner of the campground stopped by to meet our family and I proceeded to introduce them. “Babe, Sonny, Brother and Bunny, I’d like you to meet Bill.”

“Bill?” my sister, Babe, said, “What a funny name!”

My brother, a grandfather seven times over, is still Brother to everyone, related or not, and he’s Uncle Brother to nieces and nephews. As a member of a fraternal organization, wherein every member is considered a brother, he was known as Brother Brother.

Aunt Kutch was quite comfortable with her nickname, thank you, until the day she decided, quite suddenly, to become Aunt Cookie. “Easier for the children to say,” she announced, as babies were being born into the family, babies who would soon be acquiring nicknames.

Apparently exchanging one nickname for another was perfectly acceptable, but replacing a nickname with a real, listed-on-the-birth-certificate name was bizarre.

So there I was at 13, determined to change the pattern. I refused to answer everyone who called me by “that name.” I missed out on a lot of fun because Brother was determined to make me relent, to answer to my “given name,” the name he gave me, that is. He’d use it when offering me treats: “Hey, ___, want half of my candy bar?” I ignored him. Or “C’mon ___, I’ll treat you to the movies.” I walked away.

He ate the whole candy bar, in front of me, of course, and then went to the movies alone. I stayed home, a liberated woman even then.

It was about six months after my rebellion began that I noticed the first tentative signs of victory. Brother called to me from outside one day. “Gloria, come on out and play ball.” Two days later Mother called Gloria to dinner and the next day Brother asked Gloria to play Monopoly. And soon and at last, I was always Gloria. Hail the conquering heroine!

Over the years people have asked how I happen to have a common name in a family of quaint ones and I tell the story of my revolt but I never reveal the name.

To this day, I get a kick out of the fact that my dearest relatives are still Bubbles, Babe, Bunny, Doll, Brother, Sonny and Rusty instead of Barbara, Dorothy, Lilyan, Dulcie, Hewitt, Saul and Judy.

But I get a much bigger kick knowing that nobody even remembers that for 13 years I was called—ouch!—Gooky!

And I’m not showing any one of them this article.

But now that you’ve seen mine, how about showing me yours? Come on, reveal those nicknames that will make us smile or smirk, whichever comes first. But please, if you email me (at worldofwords@optonline.net) don’t call me anything but Gloria or expect to be ignored just as my family was all those years ago. I’m very good at that.

[Gloria Rosenthal runs the Wonderful World of Words weekend at Mohonk Mountain House. For more information, visit www.mohonk.com.]

HORRIBILE DICTU

Mat Coward, Somerset, Britain

“What is the most challenging aspect of being Home Secretary?” the holder of that senior British government position was asked in a magazine interview.

Counterterrorism, he said, was pretty challenging, “but the broader, ongoing issue is actually to try to build the issues around citizenship and community into the hard edged aspects of delivery.” Well, quite; there are few issues more challenging than issue-building, I always think.

Compiling this column is made considerably less challenging than it might be, by the friendly and witty letters I receive from VERBATIM readers.

Chatham Reed wrote in response to my mention in a previous issue of Butt Hole Road. “I have a photo of an establishment in Bourton-on-Water. The sign over the shop read/reads ‘Butt Studio.’ From the display inside I assumed it was a photography studio.” Well, it could have been, I suppose; either that, or a Brazilian Waxing centre.

Patty Lister of Falls Church, Virginia, kindly mentioned that she enjoyed HORRIBILE DICTU, but added: “I always wince when you ask for ‘Horribiles,’ since to me as a Latin teacher, that phrase exemplifies one. Horribile dictu, ‘horrible to say,’ is neuter, thus the plural for the adjective would be horribilia (same form as memorabilia). I hope you don’t mind my pointing out that little point of Latin grammar. Gratias maximas tibi ago!”

Thanks for that, and I promise I’ll try to remember—but frankly, I’m about as fluent in Latin as some of our leading public figures seem to be in English. Tony Blair, for instance, who in a major policy speech told the world that “Caring isn’t about caring. It’s about doing what you think is right and sticking to it.”

What a splendid example of Humpty-Dumptyism that is! I wonder if it would work as a defence in court? “Shoplifting isn’t about shoplifting, your honour—it’s about knowing what you want, and sticking it up your jumper.”

I also enjoyed the wise words of a Hollywood star, criticising women, herself included, who failed to make domestic violence an election issue: “It’s embarrassing and shameful to know I haven’t been a part of voicing my opinion as a female and as a woman.” Well, yeah—you’d hope she’d at least have had one of the two covered, wouldn’t you?

The editorial of a rather self-consciously literate newspaper didn’t do much better, when it speculated about “How different life will be when Britain is a nation of centurions.” I can’t have been the only one who thought “Damn those Romans! Don’t they know when they’re beaten?” before realising that the leader-writer meant centenarians. You wouldn’t find that kind of mistake in the Falls Church press, I’ll bet.

Mind you, I am easily confused. I had quite a headache by the time I’d figured out the newspaper headline “Demand for organic produce mushrooms,” and I’m still puzzling over a newsletter issued by my local county council. It included a piece by a famous industrialist, who explained the key to economic regeneration: “The height we manage to raise the game is dependent on everyone here.”

So raising one’s game is a matter of altitude, is it? I can see how that might work in basketball, but it’s surely going to make a nonsense of snooker.

As for this, I’ve no idea what it means at all. A television executive was described in a magazine profile as being “a fierce defender of popular drama, insisting that it can sit side-by-side more authored works.” The journalist and the executive clearly spoke the same language, since the latter expressed particular excitement about one TV play which was “a very authored vision.” Is not all drama, by definition, authored?

Advertisements on radio irritate me far more than those on telly, perhaps because the medium doesn’t offer a “look-away” option. During radio coverage of a cricket tour last winter, I was driven bonkers by this message, endlessly repeated on behalf of a firm of personal injury compensation lawyers:

“There’s no win; no fee; and no hidden charges.” If I’d been asked to author the ad, I think I might have omitted that first, distinctly audible, semi-colon.

[Send your horribilia (why not please Ms. Lister?) to Mat Coward care of VERBATIM, at editor@verbatimmag.com.]

[Mat Coward’s latest book, “Success and How to Avoid It,” is available from www.ttapress.com. Check out his website, http://hometown.aol.co.uk/matcoward/myhomepage/newsletter.html]

CLASSICAL BLATHER: Death’s Masks

Nick Humez, mythsongs@earthlink.net

Ah the power of speech. Horses, we are told, respect us because they know we can talk and they can’t.² With the right words properly delivered an orator can win over a crowd;³ a Druid priest could halt armies about to engage in battle⁴and a Celtic bard’s satiric verses would cause blemishes to appear on the face of his victim.⁵The ancient Egyptians believed that Ptah had brought into existence all the animals and plants in the world by speaking their names.5The common fantasy of creating by mere naming has its anxious side as well: Folk wisdom tells us, for example, that we must not speak of the Devil, lest he appear.

Human unwillingness to name something dysphoric for fear of making it come to pass leads naturally to euphemisms, and these are particularly abundant when it comes to talking about death, dying, disposal of remains, and the life to come. This seems to cut across cultures and times: The Romans, in place of mortuus ‘he died’, would delicately say vixit(‘he lived,’ i.e. is no longer living now),⁶ and the Navajos refer to a deceased person as “lost” or “missing.”⁷ Funerary customs may likewise be softened through metaphor: The Muria of India sing of Bagri Moro, an eight-legged horse bearing a dead body, in a song that plainly reveals that the limbs are actually those of four men carrying a bier,⁸ while Americans have learned to speak of caskets rather than coffins and what used to be cemeteries are nowadays increasingly referred to as memorial parks.⁹

Contemporary Americans often say that a person has passed on (or simply passed); this may reflect a second incentive to call death or its trappings by other than their own names: to spare, as we suppose, the already raw nerves of the bereaved by putting a face on mortality that will somehow make it seem less harsh a fact.¹⁰ Thus we may say that someone is no longer with us or departed— this last sometimes expanded by sympathetic outsiders to dear departed, presumably to temper the bereaved person’s sense of loss with a reminder of the affection of the loved ones (themselves a staple in the discourse of funeral directors)¹¹ but perhaps also (at least unconsciously) to placate the spirits of those gone before.¹²

There is theological periphrasis to cushion death’s impact as well: to go to one’s reward, to meet one’s Maker, to cross the bar,¹³ to be called home, or, in the case of nonhuman decedents, to go to Kitty/Doggy/Trombone¹⁴ Heaven. Other biblical and literary euphemisms include put on immortality, crossed over Jordan, climbed the Golden Stair, went to the bosom of Abraham, slept the Hamlet sleep (Thomas Gray) or that dreamless sleep (Byron), paid the tribute due unto nature (Laurence Sterne), responded to kind nature’s signal call of retreat (Samuel Johnson), or have shuffled off this mortal coil (Shakespeare)—all combining a softening of death’s brutal reality with a touch of class.

A third, very rich source of death euphemisms is in gallows humor that allows us to joke about death with a levity that may be proportional to the unease we feel about it. In the “Dead Parrot Sketch” (immortalized in the Monty Python film, And Now For Something Completely Different), John Cleese achieves this effect in a litany of clichés¹⁵(the bird is deceased, has ceased to be, it’s a stiff, bereft of life, has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisibule [sic], is pushing up the daisies…) as shock therapy for a pet-shop owner in denial. Often such phrases can seem to bend over backward to be in bad taste, as an antidote to the first two types of euphemisms above, by making explicit reference to the mechanism of extinction of life and the decomposition of our mortal remains thereafter: croaked,¹⁶ turn up one’s toes, kicked the bucket, snuff it, take a dirt nap, six feet under, worm food, made dust like all our bodies, and so on.

Stephen Andrew Chrisomalis, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto, is the host of a website that lists over 200 euphemisms for death and dying, many of them sardonic in this way.¹⁷ Some are peculiar to, or at least had their origin in, particular epistemic communities, such as chefs (basting the formaldehyde turkey, cooking for the Kennedys, sleeping with the quiches, marinating in soil and worms, pushing up parsley, put in the crisper, got 86’d¹⁸ or donated the liver pate, has reservations at the Chateau Eternity, is peasant under grass or fettucine al dead-o), computer wonks and technical writers (bought the disk farm, cached in his chips, got formatted with black borders, gone to the big glass house in the sky, inspired a new warning message, had his/her 80-column card punched, mailed in his/her warranty card, moved into upper management, got struck out by the Big Blue Pencil, printed white on white, reformatted by God, exported to a flat file), the armed forces (it’s Taps, he answered the last call, the bullet had his number on it, he got wasted,¹⁹ he went home in a box), gangsters and prisoners(got bumped off, knocked off, pasted, or whacked, rode the lightning [the electric chair], went to a necktie party, danced on air, went up the long ladder and down the short rope [hanging], wore cement overshoes [murder by submersion]).²⁰

A fourth source is arguably a variant of the second: euphemisms of propriety (or political correctness) carried over the top or even around the bend. The medical profession is on the whole tactful, sometimes to a fault: The dying are terminally ill (or, even more delicately, are in a condition non-conducive to life) and death is negative patient care outcome.²¹ The temptation to parody is sometimes irresistible; our current favorites are living-impaired, permasleep, and metabolically challenged.²²

Useful as death-and-dying metaphors may be in the social interactions of everyday life, decoding them is a journalistic imperative.The obituary writer for a northern New England newspaper²³ tells us that “[i]n newspaper style, people … do not pass away, go to their reward, meet their Creator, rejoin their beloved relatives, close their eyes forever, go to be with Jesus, join the saints, or engage in any other euphemistic exit from this life; they just plain die. Changing passed away to died is my most frequent editorial task.” And perhaps ours as well, at least until the trumpets sound for us, and we cross over to the other side.²⁴

---

[Nick Humez teaches mythology at Montclair State University in New Jersey; his CD, Myth Songs, was released in June. He is also the compiler of the Index to Volumes I–XXIX of VERBATIM, soon available online.]

CORRIGENDA/ADDENDA: Bud Livingston writes from Glendale, NY, that we fell into a common error: “Note 11 [to “Whatsisnames and Thingamajigs,” =VERBATIM XXIX/2] refers to the Civil War cameraman, Brady. His first name has only one ’t,' Mathew.” Just so, and our thanks for the emendation. And Phil Nast, at Syracuse University, commenting on our “Stuff and Nonsense” VERBATIM XXIX/3) felicitously draws our attention to “horse badorties, which became the name of the principal character in William Kotzwinkle’s The Fan Man, but which I understood to mean horse apples … I remember hearing it from a horsey crowd in the early 60s.”

Subversion by Adverb

Orin HargravesWestminster, Maryland

English provides a rich variety of adverbs that can be used to modulate the punch of language that they accompany—to either soften its blow, or more often, to ramp it up.

Like anything that is free and in abundant supply, these tireless soldiers are subject to overuse, misuse, and abuse. While in principle their purpose is to make meanings more accurate, adverbs often serve the opposite purpose, compromising that which they set out to improve. Thus they have become subversive in the truest sense; they “pervert or corrupt by an undermining of morals, allegiance, or faith” (that’s Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate, sense 2, by the way), and what they pervert is our faith that words mean what they are supposed to.

With so many more pressing issues to engage their energies, language police are not always in a position to clamp down on these infringements, and the result is that there is potential misuse virtually every time these wordly fellows make an excursion out of the dictionary. In each generation, new abuses arise. This article, it is hoped, will call attention to some of today’s worst crimes: not in the hope of stopping them, which is of course impossible, but with the intention of alerting readers and listeners to their insidiousness, thus empowering us all to take the law of language into our own hands.

Literally has already been abused to a degree that it merits usage notes in some dictionaries. This, of course, has not stopped the abusers, who clearly have no time to consult dictionaries anyway. Literally is attractive to a certain class of writer and speaker who does not have a wide variety of four-syllable adverbs in his or her quiver and often slips this word into a slot where a more accurate intensive—or none at all—would serve. A good rule of thumb for the aspiring language patrolperson: aside from its use in regard to languages (translate something literally) the only legitimate job of literally is in conjunction with an idiom or figure of speech. Its purpose is to alert us to the fact that the figurative language applies in some special, literal sense. In this capacity, literally is a current favorite of clever headline writers: “Art that speaks to you. Literally.” is a recent headline in a New York Times story about art installations that incorporate “soundtracks, voiceovers, and loudly-moving parts.”

But then there are the abuses. Consider these sentences from recent news stories, where literally has leapt into a slot where some other adverb (or none at all) would work better:

“I literally did not know how to be part of a big, fun family,” he goes on, somehow conveying a shudder across the phone line.

Translation: “I did not know how to be part of a big, fun family.” The speaker wishes to emphasize the importance (to him) of the statement, but would have done better with really, actually, or no adverb at all.

Savvis grew up by supporting Telerate and Reuters. Literally 66 percent of their revenue came from those two clients.

This sentence could easily be improved upon by substituting “two thirds” for “Literally 66 percent.” Unless of course it was intended to suggest that the percentage in question was in fact .6666666 (etc.) short of an actual two thirds, which is doubtful. A better adverb for emphasis here, since a quantity involved, is fully.

Literally makes occasional appearances to support a figurative expression and ends up achieving the opposite, raising doubts about whether the figure was appropriate in the first place:

This commission literally produced hundreds of recommendations which were forwarded to the Economic and Social Council of the UN.

First, the minor quibble: the writer would have done better to transpose literally and produced since the verb is not really in need of emphasis: no one doubts that something was produced. And now the major quibble: if in fact hundreds of recommendations were produced, doesn’t the noun say it all? If on the other hand, hundreds is simply indicating that some larger number was involved, “literally” has an air of desperation about it, as if trying to convince us that hundreds were involved when the number was actually far smaller. A similar case is illustrated in this gushing confession:

“I literally had to fight back the tears, being away from my family for two months and all the anticipation. It was extremely emotional.”

Fight back the tears has unimpeachable credentials as a figure of speech, but leaves no opportunity whatever for literal interpretation. It begs the question as to what weapons would be used, or how the outcome of the battle could be judged. Thus the speaker would have been more convincing without the adverb.

With it, she succeeds only in making the account of her emotional state highly dubious to the reader.

And speaking of highly: we of a certain age learned about this kind of adverb in grade school, under the heading of intensifying adverbs, or sometimes just intensifiers or intensives: words like absolutely, especially, precisely, very, and so forth. A more recent term that encompasses all such adverbs is submodifiers, when their job is to modify a word that is itself a modifier.

Highly qualifies as a submodifier of the purest strain. In its most innocent examples, it’s handy and elegant short-hand for “to a high degree.” I find that it is usually reliable when used with a participial adjective (regarded, publicized, skilled, respected, acclaimed, etc.), and these are in fact among its most frequent collocates.

But watch out for a fraudulent entry here, and that is prized. Its claims to participiality are mixed at best, prize not being a very convincing verb as a substitute for value: “I really prize your honesty.” But in any case: the popular collocation highly prized must be considered guilty until proven innocent, wherever it is encountered. On any given day, there are more than 1500 occurrences of highly prized on eBay. To give you a flavor, it is found in the description of a “Rare Baltimore Ravens Watercolor Art Print” and of “Two Pottery Barn Crazy Quilted Euro Shams.” And I’ve done the math so you don’t have to: less than 20% of items noted as “highly prized” attract a bid by their third day. You don’t need to go figure: it’s pretty clear that highly prized very often means not very prized at all.

This faux use of highly is even more rampant with nonparticipial adjectives, where it only fitfully submodifies satisfactorily. Its presence should prompt the true enforcer to scrutinize the paired adjective, to see whether in fact it has any business at all in the sentence at hand. You will find that in many cases, the intention of highly is merely to dazzle you and deflect your attention from a fraudulent modifier. Many ordinary adjectives to which highly is prefixed (especially nongradable ones, I find) are simply there to con you.

Case in point: I was in the post office the other day—the philatelic boutique part of it that you find yourself stuck in (literally forever) while waiting to do something simple, like mailing a package—and I noticed that there is a new artlike product on display. It is not merely framed, it is “custom framed,” and it is also labeled as being “highly collectable.” What is it? An assortment of canceled stamps depicting military themes, along with somebody’s dog tag, artfully arranged around a color drawing of men in battle.

Now collectable, to me, suggests one or both of two things: either that you might want to own more than one of the item (who are they kidding?), or that someone might be inclined to give you more for it than you paid (this, of course, would have to be someone way stupider than you). Conclusion: the object in question does not qualify for the epithet collectable; a fraud is being committed. And if the thing were actually highly collectable, wouldn’t there be a line of people in the post office just waiting to buy one or more? (Hmm. I wonder if that’s why the line is always so long?)

A kindred submodifier that begs for scrutiny and circumspection whenever descried is virtually. Its history in English is hoary and august; the OED gives the first cite in 1430, illustrating its original meaning, which is expressed (rather wordily) as “in respect of essence or effect, apart from actual form or specific manner; as far as essential qualities or facts are concerned.” Yet, not even 200 years had passed before writers were well on their way to subverting virtually to a weasel-word, meaning (again in OED-speak) “in effect, though not formally or explicitly; practically; to all intents; as good as.” It is instructive that while the Oxford lexicographers have taken the omnibus route for this submeaning of virtually, supplying several different substitute phrasings that it stands for, the one they didn’t supply is almost. So why do so many writers and speakers use it in this sense? Let us examine the evidence.

Modern abusers of virtually fall into two camps. The lesser crime in the use of virtually is mere elegant variation, where none is required: none of the ready supply of alternatives meaning almost or nearly is irritating or cacophonous, and they do the job better. So, for example,

This remote Washington ski area had everything I needed: big snow, big slopes and virtually no midweek skiers.

would be better served by “almost no midweek skiers” or “hardly any midweek skiers.” No other word in the sentence suggests that the writer is about to take us on a flight of poetic fancy, and so virtually here is both jarring and unnecessary.

Likewise with

I think it’s greatly exceeded virtually every expectation,” Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen said in an interview last week.

The other, graver charge against virtually (which is already hinted at in the previous example) is its use in damage limitation. The damage in question here is what would occur to the writer’s credibility if you examined his or her argument seriously. Virtually is used as a limit on some adjective or other language element that the writer wishes could be stated as an absolute, rather than a partial thing. Thus,

Traffic backups on the southbound side were virtually eliminated.

probably means in reality that your chances of getting stuck in one are still about 50-50. Likewise,

But Mr. Bernotat said it would be “virtually impossible” for Eon to de-register with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and a de-listing was not planned.

should suggest to careful readers it is highly likely that such an event could take place in a New York minute.

[Orin Hargraves' writing about language has appeared previously in VERBATIM, as well as in English Today and Dictionaries. He is the author of Mighty Fine Words and Smashing Expressions (Oxford University Press).]

EPISTOLA {William S. Haubrich}

David Galef (Autumn 2004, p. 10) asks for an acronymic medical disorder that ends in s. Here’s one: IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). One occasionally sees or hears IBS syndrome—a redundancy that David Galef deplores.

[William S. Haubrich, MD]

EPISTOLA {Saul Ricklin}

At one time rice was grown in paddy fields rather than in the now common redundancy, rice paddy. Paddy or padi is the Malay word for rice. I wonder if the redundancy came from the verb paddle meaning to wade about in shallow water which is what happens when rice is planted.

[Saul Ricklin, Bristol, RI]

As the Word Turns: Brief Lives, Brief Loves

Barry Baldwin, Calgary, Alberta

“Words have wings. You know the epithet, Winged Words, which Homer gives them, and a Syrian poet imagines them as a species of bird, those fleeting creatures escaping the memory all too rapidly unless they are netted in writing.”

It is obvious from this epigraph that John Aubrey would have been a VERBATIM subscriber. Also a devotee of tabloid tales of sex, a genre which his idiosyncratic jottings did much to invent. As his 1949 Penguin editor, Oliver Lawson Dick, observed, “Aubrey’s were the first biographies that did not point a moral,” be he advertising Mariana Morgan as “a swidging (not in the OED) lustie woman,” or encapsulating the life of Abigail Sloper: “Borne at Broad Chalke, A.D. 1648: pride; lechery; ungratefull to her father; married; runne distracted; recovered.” What a career Aubrey would have had as a writer of Hollywood synopses.

Aubrey’s kinswoman is a handsome bona roba, defined by his 2000 Penguin editors, John Buchanan-Smith and Michael Hunter, as ‘a warm-blooded woman with a healthy enjoyment of sex.’ OEDcites examples from Shakespeare to Sir Walter Scott; Eric Partridge regards plain bona (‘a very pretty girl’) as parlaree, with no pre-1889 example.

Aubrey gives us eight stanzas of a ballad on Sir John Overall’s young trophy bride, all ending Hye Nonny Nonny Noe in euphemistic reference to her vagina (OED gives six references, 1533–1832, not this one), e.g.

She trip’t it like a barren doe,

She strutted like a gor-crowe,

Which made men so fond of her

Hye Nonny Nonny Noe.

Kingsley Amis called this the best poem in the Faber Book of Comic Verse. We get a cruder one in the Life of Thomas Triplett, two samples being:

A Welch-man once was whip’t there,

Untril he did beshitt him.

His cuds-pluttera-nail

Could not prevail

For he whip’t the Cambro-Britan.

And:

For a piece of beef and turnip

Neglected with a cabbage

He took up the pillion

Of his bouncing Mayd Jillian

And sowc’t her like a baggage.

No dictionary helps on cuds-pluttera-nail; Cud’s is an oath-variant for ‘God’s’. Sowc’t' is a splendid aorist of some cant verb; Aubrey’s age, via Grose’s Dictionary, established the modern British demotic sense (‘tart’) of baggage; his bouncing Mayd Jillian prognosticates the lascivious Ann Jillian in the TV sitcom It’s A Living.

In English literature’s most hilarious knee-trembler,

“Getting up one of the mayds of honour up against a tree, she cryed, Sweet Sir Walter (sc. Walter Raleigh), will you undoe me? As the danger and the pleasure grew higher, she cryed in the extasey, Swisser Swatter, Swisser Swatter.”

Hard to beat that for amorous onomatopoeia.

You won’t find this passage or sense in OED, which defines both words as ‘imitative of the sound made by ducks splashing in water.’

In chapter 7 of The Egyptologists (Kingsley Amis & Robert Conquest, 1965), a cod professorial lecture includes in its general babble “Swisser Swatter se divine wives of Amun.” The odds against independent coinage are surely high. Amis will have read Aubrey at Oxford and/or elsewhere, one impetus being the two books on him (1948–49) by friend and fellow-novelist Anthony Powell, whose Aubrey interest went back “possibly as far as undergraduate days” (To Keep the Ball Rolling, 1983).

We may be grateful that Aubrey, as advertised in his covering letter to Anthony Wood, compiler of the more staid gossip of his Athenae Oxonienses, “putt in writing these minutes of Lives tumultuarily, nothing but the trueth, the naked and plain trueth, which is here exposed so bare that the very pudenda are not covered.” Glancing between his age and ours, one more tru(e)th is equally bare—only the spelling is different.

[Barry Baldwin has been absent far too long from our pages. His last appearance was in XXIX/2, with “Y, O Y”.]

Such a Stew About Punning

A. H. BlockBronxville, New York

Match the description with the character:

Character	Description
1. Bolingbroke	A. Mumm’s word (Latin)
2. Alarbus	B. Herr Frobe regretted
3. Eglamour	C. Rented chapeau
4. Thurio	D. Warning to deadbeat
5. Boyet	E. Minute shower
6. Montague	F. Mouthpiece for Atlanta safety
7. Capulet	G. Lipton’s dessiccating procedure
8. Tybalt	H. Surprise audit at First National
9. Hotspur	I. Gallic parent o' Monty Python’s John
10. Puck	J. Lanes out of service
11. Bottom	K. Lead Mama joins Egyptian deity
12. Faulconbridge	L. Xena’s supporters
13. Dogberry	M. Electrified rail siding
14. Brutus	N. Enjoyin' a doughnut at Starbucks
15. Laertes	O. Shaking in the French Alps
16. Gertrude	P. When drunk, he’s up
17. Fortinbras	Q. Love of Leghorn’s output (Franglaise)
18. Shallow	R. See Oregon, Delaware. I am in Louisiana
19. Cassandra	S. Exhale or expire, e.g.
20. Pandarus	T. Babalonia’s reaction to Olympic withdrawal
21. Cassio	U. Itinerary entry for S.A. tour
22. Cordelia	V. Harrass Halle
23. Banquo	W. Banned insecticide conveyance
24. Duncan	X. He who gets slapped
25. Siward	Y. Not of age
26. Pericles	Z. Criticized Greek god

MISCELLANEA: “Year of Languages” Radio Series Available

As part of the “Year of Languages” (YOL) celebration, the College of Charleston and the National Museum of Language have jointly sponsored development and distribution of a series of fifty-two radio spots on languages and linguistics. The spots are five minutes long and address a wide range of questions that a general audience might have about language, such as: Which language is the oldest? How do babies learn to talk? Where did the southern dialect come from? Whatever happened to Esperanto? The materials were written by 48 language experts from 23 states and the United Kingdom under the direction of Dr. Rick Rickerson of the College of Charleston. Information about the series, including brief biographies of the authors, can be found at http://www.cofc.edu/linguist.

The series has been aired on public radio stations in several states as well as on campus radio stations. It will soon be available for use by language professionals as part of a curriculum, a motivator in the spirit of the YOL, or in many other ways. High schools have played the spots through their intercom systems; a sixth grade teacher has used them as part of a Language Arts class; universities are using them to supplement courses that prepare new language teachers. Above all, their purpose is to raise awareness about languages and the language profession during this year of celebration.

Audio files for the series are available on the website of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (http://www.actfl.org/) and its YOL site (http://www.yearoflanguages.org/). The materials are also available on compact disks at cost ($9.65 plus postagefor the set of 4 disks,) from Georgia Schlau, Director, Michael Pincus Language Resource Center (schlaug@cofc.edu), College of Charleston. Campus radio stations may be particularly interested in broadcasting the series. If you wish to have the series broadcast in your area or on your campus, send the name of the station and e-mail address of the station manager —or other questions or comments about the series—to Dr. Rickerson at: erickerson@comcast.net.

Untitled

Larry Tritten, San Francisco, California

High on the list of things I find no less annoying than the eyesore presence of the Universal Product Code on magazine cover art and colorized TV prints of classic films noir is the untitled painting. My response to untitled paintings is well-phrased in the title of Woody Allen’s piece on the art [sic] of mime, namely, A Little Louder, Please. Does an artist who doesn’t title a painting think, I always wonder, that a picture is worth a thousand words and therefore a title would be the analogical equivalent of the proverbial hick from the sticks showing up in the big city? As a writer, I like words and their amazing capacity for clarity and precision as well as floridity and figurativeness. It seems to me that a painter who forgoes their use as part of his creative act is missing out on a good bet, the collaborative effect of language and visual imagery used in tandem. But perhaps the simple truth is that I feel snubbed in the presence of an untitled painting, like someone who wasn’t invited to the party.

In any case, I’m all for words and pictures getting along amicably. It may be that they are like the contentious and self-absorbed members of a vaudeville team, but as Neil Simon showed in The Sunshine Boys, they can strike a happy balance with each other. Early writing consisted of pictographs, which comprised the perfect détente between words and pictures.

I don’t care for untitled paintings, but they don’t scare me a bit. If the artist is too snobbish or blasé or (I daresay) too inarticulate to give me a handle on his work, I have no other choice than to take on the task myself. The painting becomes my private playground, the place where I can have my own little creative Dejeuner sur l ‘Herb. Of course, if the painting is representational one can only have so much fun with it. A bowl of pears is, inescapably, a bowl of pears. But an untitled abstract painting automatically becomes as enticing as a Rorschach test. I’m liable to pin it to the mat with a label like Halloween in Las Vegas or Nude Mutants Abusing a Rainbow or Post No Bills. My attitude is that titling a painting may be a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.

Whenever I see an untitled nonobjective painting, I invariably think that the artist failed his own Rorschach test. I’m interested in the artist’s concept of the work, but I need a little help. If he were a ventriloquist, would he let the dummy (sorry about this analogy) merely sit on his lap and stare mutely at the audience? The attitude that a title is irrelevant is dialectically lame. Coming up with the proper title might take hours, or even days, but I think it’s part of the job. Hieronymus Bosch was so bad at it, I’ve heard, that his original titled for The Garden of Earthly Delights was Where ’s Waldemar?-but he hung in there and finally got it right.

I guess I should confess that some of my earliest creative influences were artists-comic book artists. I was spellbound by their ability to create fascinating pictures, an act that seemed virtually magical to me. But personally the extent of my talent in that area was to draw stickmen and to replicate the rudimentary profile in that famous matchbook ad headlined DRAW ME and which promised to appraise one’s artistic talent as part of a search for prospective students for some art school. I also spent a lot of time tracing certain especially striking comic book pictures with the assistance of a sheet of carbon paper. I was, to be sure, strictly an artistic wannabe. But then I discovered the allure of words and settled in, ambition-wise, to aspire to be a writer.

I’m a very prose and style-conscious writer, which accounts for why I’ve written so many parodies and also explains, I’m sure, why I’ve always liked paintings that have extremely wordy titles. I’m a pushover for much of Dali, especially things like Gala and the Angelus of Millet Immediately Preceding the Arrival of the Conic Anamorphosis and Average Atmospherocephalic Bureaucrat in the Act of Milking a Cranial Harp. Okay, I admit that the offbeat and comical element of such titles is also part of their appeal. Give me some eye-boggling imagery a la surrealism, Fauvism, or Cubism spiced up with a savory title and I’m as happy as a kid with some gaudily wrapped Christmas presents. And the more outré the imagery the better, as far as I’m concerned. I’m even right at home with art brut, which is to say art created by the inmates of insane asylums, which is perhaps the culinary equivalent of haggis or headcheese. But, hey, is there any reason for believing that sanity is a requisite for artistic vision? If you know anything about the lives of the artists who bring in the biggest bucks at Sotheby’s and Christie’s you wouldn’t want to argue that point.

As much as I like wordy titles, it should also be said that some of my favorite paintings have simple, direct titles, such as Seurat’s Confetti and Van Gogh’s Still Life with Ear. Words are fun when the syntax is as busy as a party crowd on New Year’s eve, but they can also be impressive when they’re as fundamental as a cat curling up in your lap. Even one of Dali’s most memorable paintings has a one word title, Sleep.

I know from experience how hard titles can be. When I was just getting started as a writer, selling formula stories to the third-rank men’s magazines, I found that titling a story was often harder than writing it. I did, in fact, publish three stories with the same title, The Deception, because that title so easily fit those formula stories, and in retrospect I have to admit that then coming up with a good title was about as easy for me as finding arrowheads or four-left clovers. But fortunately at some point I got the knack. Some of my better short story titles lately have been Cupid with an Uzi, Angels with Soft Golden Knives, What Do You Think of Your Blue-Eyed Boy, Mr. Death?, and A Night of Dark Intent (although the last two came to me by way of lines from poems by, respectively, e.e. cummings and Robert Frost).

Finally, let me say that I’d be glad to give professional assistance to any artists who have trouble titling their paintings. Given the logic that the picture in question is presumably worth a thousand words, I think a fair rate of pay for my services would be, say, $999 per word. At those rates, with any luck at all, I would be able to buy some Dali prints and hang them in my office to provide creative inspiration.

EX CATHEDRA

This issue has been delayed in part, not just because of the usual factors (press of other work, delays of one kind or another that turn days into weeks and weeks into months) but also (I’m sure) because I was procrastinating about writing this particular column. VERBATIM is now thirty volumes old, and I have havered and wavered between wanting to have a big party, as it were, and wanting to just go about our business quietly and not make a big fuss.

So, on the celebratory side, you will have found by this point (unless you start reading from the last page, and if you do, why on earth?) that this issue included some solicited-for-the-occasion pieces from Michael Quinion and Richard Lederer, among others, and (once you turn the page) you will see that our crossword for this issue is a specially-constructed, VERBATIM-themed cryptic. And, if you are near Madison, Wisconsin October 16, you can come out to the Wisconsin Book Festival and hear me talk about VERBATIM on the occasion of this thirtieth volume.

On the quieter, let’s-just-have-a-simple-evening-at-home-side—well, this issue is really astonishingly late. And although it is VERBATIM’s thirtieth, it’s only my six-and-a-quarterth, since I did not start editing the magazine until XXIII/4.

I am writing about VERBATIM’s anniversary as if it were a birthday, but there are so many parallels that I can’t see my way clear to another metaphor. VERBATIM is old enough to know better, yet young enough to take risks. VERBATIM certainly realizes that there is plenty it doesn’t know (one of the better side-effects of aging is an increased willingness to say “I don’t know”) but still energetic enough to muster some enthusiasm for finding out. VERBATIM is settled in its habits, but not set in its ways, and is very much in the prime of its life, I hope.

Perhaps by XXX/4 (this is a very long-drawn-out birthday!) when the candles have been blown out and the cake is memorialized by crumbs on the table, we might know what thirty volumes of VERBATIM really means. As for me, with this milestone (nearly) past, I’m looking forward now to volume L/1. Now THAT will be a party!

—Erin McKean

Answers to the Cryptic Crossword

Across

1. VER + BAT + IM (rev.)

7. AS + K’S

10. STA(I)R (arts anag.)

11. PA + RIS (sir rev.)

13. TH(e) + RUM

14. MUSICAL (magical, changing a,G to US)

16. E + PEN + THESIS

18. OR + B + S

21. Q + IN + G

23. victimS OF IAgo

24. RE(d)ACT

25. WILLARD R. ESPY (anag.)

27. P(L)ACE

29. AUDI + T

30. (o)BEYS

31. A(r)C(h)E(r)S

33. NEWFANGLED (anag.)

36. SPOONER (2 defs.)

38. horribilE DICTu

39. SO(G + G)Y

40. SE(D)ER

41. ADDS (ads hom.)

42. E(PISTOL)A

Down

2. ETHER (last letters)

3. RARE (2 defs.)

4. AR(MEN)IA

5. TOM(e)

6. M + A + S + HIE

7. ARIE(s)

8. SIC! SIC! SIC!

9. SOL (rev.)

12. SAINT (anag.)

15. COB + WE + B

17. NE(A + R)ED

19. BOLLY(WOO)D (boldly anag.)

20. UR(DAN)G(e)

22. GAYE + ST

26. RUTLESS (anag.)

27. PEEPS (Pepys hom.)

28. C + HANG + E

32. EXCE + L (exec anag.)

34. F + OG + S (rev.)

35. DID + O

36. triSKAidekaphobia

37. ROI(l)

Solutions to Such a Stew About Punning

1. J. bowling broke

2. W. alar bus

3. Q. egg l’amour

4. U. Thu Rio

5. Y. boy yet

6. O. mont ague

7. C. cap you let

8. T. Tai bawled

9. M. hot spur

10. X. puck [slap shot]

11. P. bottom [bottoms up]

12. F. falcon bridge

13. V. dog Berry

14. A. brut(us)

15. G. lay/air teas

16. B. Gert rued

17. L. four tin bras

18. D. shall owe

19. K. Cass [Elliot] and Ra

20. Z. panned Ares

21. E. Casio [timepiece]

22. R. C OR DE L(I)A [state abrevs.]

23. H. bank woe

24. N. dunkin’

25. S. sigh word

26. I. pére o’Cleese

All About Me

Compiled by Robert Stigger

[This is a cryptic puzzle composed especially for VERBATIM’s 30th volume. Enjoy …]

Across

1. Note Bill Churchman’s title, “All About Me” (8)

7. For example, King’s English for enquiert (4)

10. Step one in liberal arts (5)

11. Trojan prince’s father rejected knight’s title (5)

13. 2/3 of The Spirits play guitar clumsily (5)

14. A German becomes American in magical Lloyd Webber show (7)

16. Erin’s beginning to write dissertation, “What Makes Athletes Ath-a-letes” (10)

18. Eyes Webster’s Third bound in gold and silver (4)

21. John Cleese role in General Manchu (4)

23. Name some victims of Iago (5)

24. Offer an opinion of edit eliminating penultimate of definienda (5)

25. Word expert translated Pre-war Idylls (7,1,4)

27. Guide capturing essence of etymologist’s job (5)

29. Verify car trouble’s source (5)

30. Governors don’t open minds (4)

31. Archers oddly considered great shots (4)

33. Modern reworking of fawn legend (10)

36. One sentimentally affectionate self-described bird watcher? (7)

38. Pronouncement featured in Horribile Dictu (5)

39. Waterlogged pieces of ground get planted in a legume bush (5)

40. Prophet pens a bit of doggerel for Passover ceremony (5)

41. Does the math: they’re $.40 per word, reportedly (4)

42. Firearm adorned with each letter (8)

Down

2. Ultimately, we thought 30th fete rather a gas (5)

3. Rise like an Equus caballus or like a Hapax legomenon? (4)

4. Country folk breaking into song (7)

5. Cat book is detailed? (3)

6. Club Med’s opening a school – hurry (6)

7. Singer India cut Sign of the Zodiac (4)

8. Regular feature is so-so. So? (3,3,3)

9. Article in Spanish elevated the Sun (3)

12. Tina’s free for John, Paul or George—but not Ringo (5)

15. Trap all of us British chasing swan (6)

17. Approached a royal, mired in poverty (6)

19. Film industry moved boldly, picketing court (9)

20. Founder of an Israeli tribe taken by force, nearly (6)

22. Brightest pair of stars succeeding soul singer Marvin (6)

26. Stupid result’s not groovy? (7)

27. Onomatopoetic sounds a famous diarist vocalized (5)

28. Rewrite fifth of articles; rest end in garbage (6)

32. 50 supporting struggling exec do very well (5)

34. Clouds of sulfur pass Fuji’s face, rising (4)

35. Prank accomplished nothing (4)

36. “Triskaidekaphobia” has a Jamaican sound (3)

37. King Lear’s debut leaves disquiet (3)

Internet Archive copy of this issue

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1. Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins, published in the USA by the Smithsonian Institution Press, ISBN 1588342190; outside the USA available as Port Out, Starboard Home: And Other Language Myths, published by Penguin Books, ISBN 0140515348. ↩︎

2. As remarked to the writer by Jo Diggs (ca. 1985), an empirical observation of equine interspecies relations that surely merits further research. The motif of the talking horse/donkey goes back at least to the Bible (Balaam’s ass, Numbers 22:28-30) and is alive and well in American popular culture even as fewer and fewer people are living on farms and acquainted with the animals at first hand. The definitive television show on this theme was Mister Ed, which aired a total of 143 episodes from 1961 to 1966 and featured Allan “Rocky” Lane as the voice of the title character. What a talking horse does might arguably be called hippoglossy—but never equivocation. ↩︎

3. Marcus Tullius Cicero, no mean rhetorician in his own right, famously said that “[i]f truth were self-evident, rhetoric would not be necessary.”Instruction in oratory was a profitable trade as least as early as fifth-century-B.C. Greece; Philip Wheelwright’s The Pre-Socratics records that two of the first Sophists, Protagoras and Gorgias, became very wealthy from tuition paid to them by aspiring Athenian public speakers, and Aristophanes lampoons Socrates as a mere teacher of forensic sophistry in The Clouds. Half a millenium later, Quintilian offered advice to Roman orators in his Institutio, which included helpful tips on the use of humor to keep judges from focusing on unfavorable evidence or simply nodding off during long trials, while his contemporary and fellow-Spaniard Martial, in an epigram on a tedious speaker in court who repeatedly asked for more time (measured in cycles of the clepsydra, or water-clock) all the while guzzling water to keep his throat from drying, proposed as a remedy for both ills that the speaker “drink the clepsydra instead.” ↩︎

4. According to the Emperor Augustus’s contemporaries Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, cited in Jeffrey Gantz, tr., Early Irish Myths and Sagas (New York: Penguin, 1981), page 10; Diodorus claims that the “singing bards” could do this as well. See next note. ↩︎

5. So wrote Fred Norris Robinson in 1911 in his essay “Satirists and Enchanters in Early Irish Literature” (American Committee for Irish Studies Reprint No. 1, excerpted from David Gordon Lyon and George Foot Moore, eds., Studies in the History of Religion, an undated festschrift for Crawford Howell Toy), page 114ff. Irish bardic satire could also exterminate mice and rats (ibid., page 96 and footnote 5). ↩︎

6. By the same token, a Roman euphemism for the Underworld was ora Acheruntis, “the shores of Acheron,” one of the five rivers supposed to exist in the nether regions. Neither the Romans nor the Greeks spoke much about the god of the Underworld—his Roman name, Pluto, was originally itself a euphemism, ploutos meaning “the rich one” since all the metals and minerals mined by the living were technically in his domain—though Homer (cited in Robert Graves, The Greek Myths [Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1971], pp. 120) reports that Greeks would occasionally invoke him by striking the ground with the flat of the hand if one wanted to get a message to someone already dead. ↩︎

7. According to David Cates, who did anthropological fieldwork among the Navajos in the early 1950s. The term is èdin (both vowels are short and the accent indicates a rising tone), the same word one would use for a sheep that has gone missing from one’s flock. ↩︎

8. H. R. Ellis Davison quotes eight lines of this song in Gods and Myths of Northern Europe(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1984, pp. 142–43), in connection with Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse ridden by Odin in his dual capacity as shaman and psychopomp. ↩︎

9. Cemetery in turn having replaced burying ground and graveyard, although the latter is sometimes used adjectivally (e.g. the early Romantic elegiac poets collectively referred to as “the graveyard school”). Similarly box for coffin is retained in a vernacular expression for kill, as in the song “Bomb Iran” burlesque of the classic rock number “Barbara Ann”), which hit the charts in 1979 at the height of the Teheran hostage crisis and contained the verse “Went to a mosque/Gonna throw some rocks/Tell the Ayatollah/‘Gonna put you in a box.” Casket-tested is cited by Mark Peters (“Like a Hyphen Between Troubled Words,” VERBATIM XXIX/4 [Winter 2005], page 12) as #3 in a top ten list of least-used hyphenated words aired on the TV show Late Night with David Letterman [broadcast date unknown]. ↩︎

10. In medical arts, this reticence is not confined to euphemisms for death, as readers may recall from William H. Dougherty’s delightful article “Bromides” (VERBATIM XXIV/1 [Winter 1999], pp. 23–25), which gives, however, one of the most elaborate examples it has been our pleasure to encounter: carried home in the sweet winged chariot that always at my back I hear hurrying near. Apart from its erudite hat-tip to Andrew Marvell’s coy mistress, this phrase offers an elegant combination of semantic and syntactic embedding seldom encountered in modern English prose. ↩︎

11. Formerly called morticians, in turn replacing undertakers; in fairness, it must be said that these were not merely the euphemisms of the day, for the skill set has changed somewhat too—see, e.g., the HBO series Six Feet Under. For a less sympathetic view of contemporary American funerary practice see Jessica Mitford’s scathing exposé, The American Way of Death, revised and reissued in 1998 as The American Way of Death Revisited (the paperback edition—New York: Vintage, 2000—is still in print at this writing), as well as Evelyn Waugh’s bitingly hilarious novel, The Loved One ( Boston: Little, Brown, 1947), made into a film by Tony Richardson for MGM in 1965 with a script adapted from (an annoyed) Waugh’s book by Terry Southern. ↩︎

12. Space limitations forbid digressing at length into the many customs across cultures and times to appease the malevolence of ghosts, a source of anxiety reaching back at least as far as the Babylonian Empire (see N.K. Sandars’s introduction to her translations of the Enuma Elish and Inann'’s Descent to the Underworld published by Penguin in 1968 as Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia, of which perhaps the most quaint was the custom of the Roman paterfamilias leading a procession through his house while scattering beans over his shoulder as an offering to the lemures, the spirits of the dead who visited their former dwellings during the two nights of the year celebrated as the Lemuria. According to Sir James George Frazer (of Golden Bough fame), the beans were a substitute for the souls of the living, whom the dead might otherwise have carried off on account of feeling lonely in the world to come (“Roman Religion,” in Graves et al., eds., New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology). ↩︎

13. A phrase made particularly popular by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his poem “Crossing the Bar” (1889), and twigged by Dame Edith Sitwell in her poem “When Sir Beelzebub,” the finale to her collaboration with the young composer William Walton, Façade (1924). ↩︎

14. Questioned by a newspaper reporter about an Eastman student who had been struck by a car while walking across a street in Rochester, NY, in 1988, a police spokeswoman replied that since he was struck on the side on which he was carrying his instrument case, the young man had escaped serious injury—unlike his trombone, which, said the officer, had “gone to Trombone Heaven.” (Associated Press, summer 1988; exact date unknown.) But there is also a CD called Trombone Heaven, an album of hymns arranged for trombone choir (and effusively lauded by Boston Symphony bass trombonist Douglas Yeo in a 2001 posting to the newsgroup trombone-l@lists.missouri.edu archived on www.trombone.org), available by mail order from the felicitously named David Bandman of Springfield, Virginia. (See http://www.trombone.org/trombone-l/archives/0110/011013_2178.txt) ↩︎

15. Not to be confused with “The Catechism of Cliché,” a recurring feature in the Cruiskeen Lawn column Brian O’Nolan wrote for the Irish Times under the pen name Myles na gCopaleen. O’Nolan is perhaps better known today under his other pseudonym, Flann O’Brien, as the author of several satiric novels including At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman. ↩︎

16. Possibly an allusion to the “death rattle” of Cheyne-Stokes respiration, the final breathing of those not long for this world; see Humez, “Eponymous Ailments” VERBATIM XXVI/3 p. 11). ↩︎

17. The site, appropriately entitled “Dead & Buried” (http://phrontistery.50megs.com/longpig/dead.html) was compiled, says its writer, “as part of a course on the sociology of dying and death.” He adds, “I know there are tons more out there,” and encourages readers to send them in to be added to his existing list. The homepage name “Forthright’s Phrontistery” pays homage to the Phrontisterion (often glossed as “Thinkery;” literally, something like “Place of Careful Thought”–phrontis is Greek for ‘care’) of Socrates, in Aristophanes’ Clouds. [On] Death and Dying, a catchphrase made famous as the title of an influential work by thanatologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, is of course a reversal of the normal time sequence of these states, a classic example of the poetic figure called hysteron proteron (“later [thing] earlier”). ↩︎

18. The origin of “86 the x” as slang for “We’re all out of x” is obscure, but the expression is common enough throughout the American food-service industry that its metaphoric use as ‘kill’ appears to be universally understood within the trade as well. ↩︎

19. Wasted, a favorite of the Vietnam war era, also came to mean “under the influence of mind-altering substances”—compare blown away, which first meant ‘[explosively] killed,’ then ‘stoned,’ but has since softened in common use to mean merely ‘astonished’ or ‘impressed.’ ↩︎

20. State terrorism may have its own reasons for wishing to avoid calling death, and particularly executions, by their proper name. Thus the Soviet Union referred to the ‘liquidation’ of people, perhaps in keeping with the Marxist view of humanity as homo oeconimicus (compare the modern American euphemism human resources, commonly shortened to HR, for ‘workers’), while Nazi Germany used resettled or relocated to the east to mask the deportation of Jews and others to the death camps. (I am indebted to Valentine M. Smith for the last two examples.) ↩︎

21. See note 10 above. The use of “Ten-x/ Code x” where xis a number or color for a life-threatening or terminating situation differs from the euphemisms mentioned here because such codes are deliberately intended to be clearly understood by the wise (officers on patrol, hospital staff) while being incomprehensible to casual hearers (civilians monitoring police radio frequencies, other patients). However, given today’s wealth of detective-novel police procedurals and TV hospital dramas, this wall of confidentiality has become a semi-permeable membrane at best. ↩︎

22. The first two examples are from the “Dead and Buried” site (see note 17 above); the third is passed on by Jane Cates, who attributes it to Ruth Weilgosch, the daughter of her college classmate Pamela Kampf. ↩︎

23. David Weinstock of Middlebury, Vermont. ↩︎

24. The end of the journey for Valiant-for-Truth in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress—one of the three books most likely to be found in a literate New England household of the 17th century; the other two were Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and, of course, the Bible, according to Alan Heimert (lectures for English 70, Harvard College, fall term 1968). ↩︎