Vol XXX, No 3 []

Conan the Grammarian

Richard Lederer, San Diego, California, San Diego, California

Call me Conan the Grammarian: Undangler of Participles, Destroyer of Gratuitous Apostrophes, Protector of Pronoun Case. I know that I am not alone in this reaction. Riding this planet are millions of us for whom atrocious violations of standard usage squeak like chalk across the blackboard of our sensibilities.

I am not Conan the Unsplitter of Split Infinitives, the Terminator of Terminal Prepositions. The injunctions against cleft infinitives and terminal prepositions are completely bogus. Such proclamations exist as sheer rumor and gossip. They are never enshrined in reputable usage manuals.

I own a Ph.D. in linguistics, the scientific study of language, so I’m supposed to see language change as neither good nor bad but natural evolution. I am aware that English is a living language. Like a tree, language sheds its leaves and grows new ones so that it may live on. But to recognize the reality of and the need for change does not mean that we must accept the mindless permissiveness that pervades the use of English in our society.

I consider myself to be a compassionate prescriptivist. I understand that just as one never steps into the same river twice, one cannot step into the same language twice. Even as one enters, words are swept downstream into the past, forever making a different river. But—and please allow me to employ yet a third metaphor—standard usage is written on the sand. That sand may one day erode or blow away, but at any moment in history, the rules of usage are written in the collective consciousness of caring and careful users of our language. One day “Me and Mary have a ball with language” and “The book is laying on the table” may be standard English, but not now.

I truly believe that to reap the full fruits of American civilization (hmmm, a fourth metaphor), one must be in control of the dialect we call standard English, the dialect that most books and business reports are written in and most broadcasts are broadcast in.

There are those who contend, “Who cares how you say or write something, as long as people understand you?” This is like saying, “Who cares what clothing you wear, as long as it keeps you warm and covers your nakedness?” But clothing does more than provide warmth and cover, just as language does more than transfer ideas. The sensible man and woman knows when to wear a business suit and when to wear a T-shirt and shorts, when to wear a tuxedo and when to wear a flannel shirt and dungarees. So that’s my fifth metaphor/analogy: Both clothing and language make statements about the wearer and the user.

Thus, in an effort to make the world a better place, I cleave to Conan the Grammarian’s Three Rules of Correcting Others:

(1) Are you right?

(2) Will it make a difference?

(3) If conditions (1) and (2) are met, do the correcting in private.

I visit my doctor, and his nurse instructs me to “lay down on the table.” I am excruciatingly aware that millions of Americans seem unable to distinguish between lie, an intransitive verb that means ‘repose,’ and lay, a transitive verb that means ‘put.’ They do not grasp that once they’re done laying a book on the table, it lies—not lays—there. Pardon the fowl language, but a hen on its back is lying; a hen on its stomach may be laying—an egg.

But enough (please don’t ask me to quantify when enough is “enough”) of us standard English speakers and writers adhere to that distinction that I feel that I’m right about enforcing it in reasonably formal situations.

And in the case of the nurse, who’s probably misusing lay many times each day and could lose the doctor business, I feel that my interposition will make a difference. So, with a smile, not a sneer, I correct her in the privacy of the examining room and hope that she won’t seek revenge on me by ordering up three successive prostate probes.

I’m speaking before a group and the master of ceremonies asks me if I want to place my notes “on the podium.” I think to myself, “How could I stoop so low?” but I do not correct my host. It’s true that etymologically a lectern (from the Latin lectura, “to read“) is the slant-topped desk, while a podium (from the Greek podia, “foot“) is the small base on which the speaker stands, but my personal polls show that more than 90% of the U.S. population (and this includes my surveys of English teachers) uses podium to stand for either item of furniture. So I hold my tongue.

I know that anxious and eager have both been used for centuries to mean “characterized by anxiety.” But enough of us Standard English users distinguish between “I’m eager to meet you” (happy anticipation) and “I’m anxious about meeting you” (evincing anxiety) that I feel urges to correct those who say or write, “I’m anxious to meet you.” On the other hand, so few of us cleave to the belief that something that encourages health is healthful and makes us healthy that I do not don my Conan the Grammarian cape for that battle. In fact, I congratulate the folks who came up with the name Healthy Choice for the frozen food line. They’re selling a lot more packages than if they’d named the product Healthful Choice.

Should we feel badly about “I feel badly”? Although “I feel badly that I let you down” represents an admirable attempt to differentiate physical ill being (“I feel bad”) from emotional ill being (“I feel badly”), much in the manner of “I feel good” vs. “I feel well,” “feel badly” has been criticized for about a century.

When I ask the offended why they object, their voices slip into the tonal groove that the century-old explanation has worn for itself: “If you feel badly, your finger tips must be sandpapered or Novocained, or you’re wearing thick gloves.” Har har—but for a great number of people this disapproval is very real.

When I attempt to explain to the finger waggers that the badly in feel badly is not an adverb but an adjective, in the manner of costly, elderly, friendly, kindly, sickly, and more than a hundred other adjectives that wag -ly tails, they still feel strongly (ahem!) that feel badly is somehow wrongheaded. So at this juncture in our history, to avoid the disapproval of others, I recommend that you feel bad, not badly.

Do students graduate from an institution, or do they graduate that institution? Well, an institution graduates its students. Therefore, the most logical way to talk and write about an awarding of diplomas is “I was graduated from Bilgewater State in 1968,” and that passive construction was the traditional idiom from the 16th century into the 19th century.

Gradually “I graduated from” came in and supplanted “I was graduated from,” except in highly formal statements, such as wedding announcements: “Born and raised in Philadelphia, the groom was graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.” Nowadays many younger Americans, especially younger ones, like to drop prepositions and particle verbs and say, “Let’s hang,” “Can you deal?” “Don’t cave.” Thus, there is pressure to say and write, “I graduated Bilgewater State in 1968.” Nonetheless, “I graduated from” remains the standard idiom—for now —and I, Conan the Grammarian, stoutly defend it.

Part of being a compassionate corrector is knowing when not to correct even a blatant boo-boo. Almost thirty years ago, my 13-year-old son brought home a sign he had lovingly crafted in junior high school wood shop. It read THE LEDERER’S. You see this apostrophe catastrophe in front of houses and on mailboxes everywhere: “The Smith’s, “The Gump’s.” These “prespostrophes” are distressing signs of our times. Which Smith? Which Gump? Here we have an atrocity of both case and number in one felonious swoop.

Who lives in the house? The Smiths. The Gumps. The Lederers. That’s what the signs should say. It’s really nobody else’s business whether the Smiths, the Gumps, or the Lederers own their domiciles. All we need know is that the Smiths, the Gumps, and the Lederers reside there. If you must announce possession, place the apostrophe after the plural: The Smiths'. The Gumps'. The Lederers'.

At that time, I didn’t tell my son that he was a victim of a nationwide conspiracy of junior high school shop teachers dedicated to spreading apostrophe catastrophe throughout our land. You see, I’m a compassionate corrector.

The sign still sits in front of our home and I still haven’t told my son, who’s now 42. Why? I love my boy, and he still comes to visit.

[Richard Lederer’s newest book is Comma Sense: A Fun-damental Guide to Punctuation.]

Language Felonies

Natalia Cherjovsky, Orlando, Florida

Quotidian. Kinetic. Pungent.

Contrary to popular belief, the words above are not gibberish or insults. I did not invent them for my evil conceit; neither did I unearth them from the ruins of an extinct civilization.

Indeed the offenders are proud—if slightly anonymous—constituents of what we know as the English language. I identify them as offenders with cause, as they have been culprits in my abortive attempt to convey meaning. They bear the burden for many others like them for no other reason than that they are fresh in my mind for recklessly infiltrating my speech in the course of a conversation yesterday evening and wreaking all varieties of havoc.

There they were, in all their brilliance, pouring freely from my mouth. The scoundrels! Don’t they know they are never intended to be spoken outside of the realm of an English classroom—and even within that precinct, only when entirely inevitable, in extreme circumstances such as the sporadic reading of an artifact known as a book? The rogues! Such insolence to imagine that they would be allowed to put in an unscheduled, unauthorized appearance outside of their sanctuary, thoughtlessly running amuck, shamelessly mingling with normal words, as if they belonged, their mischief turned into a bona fide calamity. Their illicit jaunt outside of the academic asylum to which they have been banished for an indefinite exile single-handedly disrupted the flow of a meeting and ruffled many a feather in the happy pond that was my office.

“Supposably, she teaches English at a university. But that don’t mean she has to, like, throw big words around and stuff. She’s showing off and, like, trying to look all smart and making us look, like, stupid.”

These were the charges against me, as I overheard them from behind the protective barricades that were the walls of the bathroom stall.

I stood accused of the high crimes of gratuitous use of unusual vocabulary and conspiracy to make my colleagues feel inadequate. Apparently, the tragic crisis was not their deficient acquaintance with the language but my inconsiderately liberal use of its range. Silly me. I had neglected the implicit obligation to circumscribe my utterances to the most mediocre vernacular possible. I was indeed perplexed. What, I asked myself, would be the penance that would expiate my transgression? Perhaps my fate was to be excluded as a conversational pariah, with whom any type of banter is to be promptly avoided. After all, I had disregarded the tacit directive issued to all of us: to aim for the lowest common denominator, lest we generate in anyone the discomfort associated with introspection. We have, it would seem, vacated what I thought might be the last bastion of autonomy: self-actualization. Accountability has once again been reallocated to accommodate and perpetuate our placid stagnation.

The burden of remedying the situation rests not with those whose skills are subpar but with those who deliberately—or maybe even inadvertently—trespass on people’s unalienable right to have their ignorance remain intact.

This is the part where someone chimes in with a diatribe on equality—or lack thereof—that will inevitably hinge on the fact that not everyone has access to an education—at least not a suitable one. So, in a preemptive maneuver, I shall address that notion. I am not negating the existence of inequity. I am, however, disqualifying it as a blanket reason and unmasking it as the scapegoat it is; it is the pretext revisited whenever someone threatens our complacency; it is the motive which we want to believe grants us carte blanche to wallow in self-pity. There is something to be said for becoming answerable for one’s erudition. At some point, maybe once we have had our fill of bemoaning our misfortune and decrying our imposed limitations—instances of self-indulgence some of us prefer to skirt completely—we should take responsibility for the status of our lives.

At this juncture, I could of course summon examples of prominent people who have, through sheer resolve, overcome adversity and emerged triumphant. But that would feel a bit like cheating. Although, perchance, counterintuitive as the thought may appear, therein lies the hindrance: that most of us are not immersed in hardship, which often acts as a natural source of motivation, forcing our survival instincts into overdrive. Were we faced with the unspeakable circumstances some of these people had to endure, we might be more likely to persevere. Alas, it is not so, and we must derive our inspiration from elsewhere.

Back to my indictment as a language agitator. If I was reasonably confounded by the allegation itself, I was duly insulted by the fact that my choice of words was being disparaged by someone who had managed to torture English beyond recognition in the space of a few seconds. I might be disillusioned, even frustrated, by people’s refusal to broaden their vocabulary or remedy their inability to cope with the breadth of our language. I am, however, infuriated by the abandon with which they foster its desecration. From innovative ways to match subjects and verbs—pardon my facetiousness—to severely mangled words, there is an assortment of techniques to defile the English language. And before you dub me a reactionary, I must be adamant about the fact that I am not being intransigent. I am aware that languages evolve. I am a slang enthusiast and a fan of most neologisms. I firmly believe in incorporating these into our vernacular. Yet I also believe in being eloquent and not bastardizing the language. I might be fighting a losing battle. I am certainly outnumbered. This said, I refuse to be rendered inarticulate by the prospect of being stigmatized as a member of the aberrant minority. And to those whom my unrepentant words may affront, I say, “A miscreant I am not. The intricacy of my utterances is not indicative of any furtive aspiration to obfuscate. I beseech you, acquire a dictionary.”

[Natalia Cherjovsky is an Argentinean-born writer who currently resides in Orlando, Florida. She is a university professor who teaches English and Media Studies and is on her way to finishing her Ph.D. at the University of Central Florida. Her research interests include globalization, cultural imperialism, gender studies, identity, and psychology.]

Ulsterisms for Everyday Use

Anne Moore, Leeds, Yorkshire

Every culture messes around with its “mother tongue” with happy results, and none more so than Ulster. We use more colourful speech, make subtle changes, define our regional identity, and claim it by continuing to employ the traditional phraseology. Northern Ireland has absorbed new technological jargon and people love to text and email, though it probably takes them longer as there is a need to use more words than the electronic media demand.

I guess the favourite means of communication has still got to be talking, so here follows a small selection of Ulsterisms to puzzle, enlighten, and perhaps amuse. Make of them what you will; reading them aloud in a voice like Ian Paisley should assist understanding and correct interpretation.

Wadda boucha? ‘How are you today?’

D’ya wanna wee piece? ‘Would you like a sandwich?’

D’ya fancy a poke? ‘Would you like an ice-cream cornet?’

Am gittin a bit a fenian stake. ‘I am having fish for tea.’

Give over girnin'. ‘Please stop crying.’

Yill be singin' McNamara’s wee song Sorry Was I! ‘If you continue to behave badly you will get a smack!’

Am all up the left the day. ‘Everything I do today is going wrong.’

Did ye git lifted? ‘Did anyone ask you to dance?’

Ar dawg’s a sooner. ‘My dog prefers to pee on the carpet rather than go outside.’

Ar ye a Fenian or a Prod agnostic? ‘Is it the Catholic or Protestant God you’re not sure of?’

A’m a left futter. ‘I practise Catholicism.’

Ach away on! Depending on rising or falling inflection, this can mean ‘Oh, really?’ or ‘Leave me alone!’

It might have occurred to you by this point that purchasing a phrasebook before visiting Northern Ireland might be wise, or failing that, enlisting the assistance of a native friend or relative to interpret for you.

When ceilidhing (‘having a chat’) with a kindred spirit, or even a stranger on the bus, there is nothing more satisfying than pointing out the failings of others. These may be of a mutual friend, colleague, acquaintance, or the girl who reads the six o’clock News! Nobody escapes, but as my mother, God rest her, always said, “When they’re talkin' about me, they’re leavin' somebody else alone.”

The following might well be used in such discussions, sometimes described as tearin' some poor soul to pieces:

See hur, there’s more in hur head than the comb’ll take out. ‘She is a very secretive, astute and possibly untrustworthy individual.’

Wan eye’s away fer the messages an' the other’s away back fer the change. ‘That poor person has a terrible squint.’

Mind him, he’ll pick ye like a willick! ‘Be careful what you say, this person can extract a great deal of information from you.’

Oh aye, she’s the girl in the big picture. ‘This woman has an inflated idea of her physical attractions.’

A face like a barn dure wi' the bolt pulled out. ‘A very ugly person.’

God help hur, hur boiler’s busted. ‘Someone not quite mentally competent.’

Waddya want me ti do? Put it in the corner and throw sugar at it? ‘Do you not wish me to make use of this opportunity/asset?’

He’s like ma granny’s aunt. ‘This man is very old-fashioned and fussy in dress and outlook.’

She’s as many faces as the town clock. ‘This is an untrustworthy woman who may deceive you.’

Here are a few samples wherein feelings and emotions are expressed:

Ach away up n' lie down! ‘Do be sensible, please!’

D’ya wanna dig in the bake? ‘Have a care or you may get a punch on the nose!’

Shut yer bake! ‘Do be quiet!’

It’s bawggin. ‘I am shocked at how dirty it (any item from a kitchen to a dress) is.’

D’ya think I come up the Lagan on a bubble? ‘Do you consider me so naive?’

Thon’s a joke wi' a jeag. ‘That was a rather cruel and sarcastic comment.’

They’ve kitchen ti every male. ‘Those people are so well off they eat meat at every repast, and I am rather envious.’

Yer a pitcher no artist cud paint! This commentdepends on the tone of delivery and facial expression and could either mean ‘how marvellous you look!’ or ‘you cannot possibly intend to leave the house looking like THAT!’

I have to include a couple of my favourites from yer man Paisley. In my youth, he struck fear into my heart, as he was a powerful man and quite dangerous.

He’s a Lundy, get rid of him! ‘He’s a traitor to the cause.’ (As my family name was Lundy, I lived in fear of the day that Mr. Paisley would send some big fellas to our house to eradicate us all.)

That red-robed harlot of the Tiber. ‘The Pope.’ (Scant regard for gender, but said with venom and a great belief in his own oratorical skills.)

If meanings did not immediately spring to mind, don’t annoy yerself. I need at least three hours back ‘at home’ before understanding of what I am hearing kicks in. Never forget to watch and listen very carefully, or you could be in deep trouble. Misinterpretation could leave you all cut n no iodine (‘extremely embarrassed!').

[Anne Moore was born in Belfast, and moved to study at Leeds University in 1968. She has worked as a teacher, civil servant, in-house training consultant, mother, grandmother, drama queen, and sometimes folksinger (when in her cups). She has a degree in drama and education, is qualified in training and development, and has a burning ambition to be a millionaire.]

EX CATHEDRA

With this issue we say goodbye to Lorraine Alexson, who has cheerfully copyedited VERBATIM these past five years.

Lorraine put up with multiple languages, “flexible” punctuation styles, and morphing typefaces with grace and great good humor. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors.

Stephen Dodson has now taken over this more-or-less thankless task. (All really terrible howlers, of course, remain the fault and sole property of the Editor.)

—Erin McKean

Fourteenth Century Orthography

The crafty scribes abridged in curious ways,

Contriving signs perplexing if not crazy;

Provoking us in every other phrase

Till we concur that they were very lazy.

When this occurs recurrently, we’re vexed,

So utterly contraried by their text

That, wearied by the strain we’ve undergone,

We probably feel much less pro than con.

Within a Century or Two

Soon nothing much of this was left, save wh˜e;

A tilde or a macron dropped an “n,”

And, on occasion, either one of th˜e;

Was likewise used to amputate an “m.”

Now time is what we save, as we

Accelerate a.s.a.p,

Acronymizing all we do

am, pm and p.d.q.

—Henry Fischer

[We’re sad to report that Henry Fischer passed away January 11. He will be sorely missed.]

Hunting the Wayzgoose

Dorothy E. Zemach, Eugene, Oregon

When I was growing up, my family did not consider it cheating to page through the dictionary while playing Scrabble, searching for unknown words that might match one’s letters (though it was considered unsporting for some reason to look at the cover of the box while doing a jigsaw puzzle). It was on just such a romp through the W’s that I stumbled across the most intriguing word I’ve ever met in the English language: wayzgoose. It looks good. It sounds good. And it even has a good definition. It’s not, as so many of those crossword puzzle answers turn out to be, an obsolete monetary unit of South America or an endangered rodent. A wayzgoose is—and I quote—“An annual festivity held in summer by the employees of a printing establishment, consisting of a dinner and usually an excursion into the country (British).” In spite of its appeal, however, it’s not an easy word to work into casual, everyday conversation, unless you go for something obvious, like, “Hey, I bet you’ll never guess what wayzgoose means.” And so I tucked it in one of those back corners of my brain reserved for important but not often needed information, like when I’d had my last tetanus booster and the location of my birth certificate.

Fast-forward twenty years. I’m teaching in a university, so that I have both my summers off and the need to write and publish something during them. I’ve been working hard on a textbook with Oxford University Press in the U.K., and before classes resume, I want to use my frequent-flier miles to take a vacation. I mention this in an offhand way to my editor in Oxford, and she says that it would actually be quite useful for me to come to England. Though the Press couldn’t pay my airfare, they could put me up and provide most meals, and since I have a free ticket anyway … and suddenly it hits me. Britain. Summer. A printing establishment. And I know what I have to do. With the enthusiastic support of my family (husband: “I can’t believe you’re flying all the way to England for a picnic“), I begin to plan my wayzgoose.

What is this word, and where did it come from? What accounts for the odd spelling? It only adds to the word’s appeal that no one really seems to know. What’s generally agreed upon is that it is a printers’ picnic, that it was at its height in England in the 17th century, that it was celebrated around the time of the feast of St. Bartholomew (patron saint of printers—also shoemakers, cheese merchants, beekeepers, Armenia, and twitching; his feast day is August 24), and that it marked the start of the season when printers would need to work in the late afternoons by candlelight. Geoff Heinricks, in his review of the modern wayzgoose of Grimsby, Canada, claims that in the past, the wayzgoose “was often a roaring, prankish and sotted day for those then at the cutting edge of communications, oh say in 1801,” but alas, gives no clue as to how the extent of revelry is known. (Mr. Heinricks now owns a winery.)

The first appearance of the word, though with a slightly different spelling, dates from 1683. The Oxford English Dictionary cites Joseph Moxon, in Mechanick Exercises: “It is also customary for all the Journey-men to make every Year new Paper Windows…; Because that day they make them, the Master Printer gives them a Way-goose; that is, he makes them a good Feast, and not only entertains them at his own House, but besides, gives them Money to spend at the Ale-house or Tavern at Night. These Way-gooses, are always kept about Bartholomew-tide. And till the Master-Printer have given this Way-goose, the Journey-men do not use to Work by Candle Light.” If you are wondering why the printers would need candlelight on St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, it helps to know that Moxon was writing before the calendar was reformed in 1752. That actually puts his August 24 closer to September 4, when the sun sets in England around 6:15. Since printers worked until 8:00 pm or so, they would indeed need those candles at the end of the day; it was either that or go home early.

Wayzgoose programs from Cambridge University Press in the U.K. show that the Queen of England used to attend, as well as the Syndics (as the governing body of the Press are still called) and the Prince and Princess of Wales.

The program included songs and glee (by which I think they meant only more songs), and a dauntingly full menu; one typical bill of fare listed two types of soup, three fish dishes, five joints (as in “of meat“), and four offerings of poultry, topped off with five desserts, cheese, and salad. The excursions, by carriage or train, were to such places as Alexandra Palace in London, the Great Eastern Hotel in Harwich, the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, various hotels in Brighton, and, once, the Royal Aquarium in Yarmouth. The programs I have seen (not a complete collection) do not answer all questions, including that of how old the tradition is. The 1948 program announces the “78th annual wayzgoose”; but many earlier programs use the words “annual festival” in place of wayzgoose, and the earliest one I have seen, from 1878, says it is the 23rd such event. Perhaps someone not unlike me discovered the word wayzgoose and added it to an already existing tradition of an annual employees' outing.

South African writer Roy Campbell (you know—author of The Flaming Terrapin) wrote a long satirical poem entitled The Wayzgoose in 1928, but on its first page he felt it necessary to define the term: “This phenomenon occurs annually in S.A. It appears to be a vast corroboree of journalists, and to judge from their own reports of it, it combines the functions of a bun-fight, an Eisteddfod, and an Olympic contest.”

Etymologists cannot agree whether the word has anything to do with a goose. In the pro-goose camp, comprised of those who feel that a goose must have been the main course at these events, Brett Rutherford hazards that the word could have come from the French word for goose, oie /wa/, combined with the English goose. He points out that in Belgium, the word for a printer’s feast was gansdach, or goose day.

A different but equally appealing explanation from bookseller and printer Charles Henry Timperley in 1833 has it thus: “The derivation of this term is not generally known. It is from the old English word wayz, stubble. A wayz Goose was the head dish at the annual feast of the forefathers of our fraternity.” In the same line, Timperley’s The Printers' Manual of 1838, cited in the OED, notes that “the old English word for stubble is Ways and a Stubble Goose is a Ways-goose; … [A] goose was the head dish at the annual feast of our [printing] fraternity.”

Stubble, for those not up on farming, refers to what’s left of harvested grains; a stubble goose, presumably one that wanders through the fields eating these remains, is a term for the graylag goose, a type of wild goose found in England. A stubble goose was traditionally presented by tenants to their landlords on Michaelmas, or St. Michael’s Day, which falls on September 29; apparently it was the time of year when these geese were at their best, so it stands to reason that they may also have been served up a few weeks earlier for St. Bartholomew’s feast day as well.

The anti-goose camp has, on their side, doubt or outright denial. The OED declares that “there is no evidence that the second element is to be identified with goose” and says that “Bailey’s assertion that the word had the sense of ‘stubble-goose’ is unsupported, and is very unlikely; this allegation, and the accompanying fantastic misspelling of wase, may have been suggested by the idea that the obscure word waygoose could be explained on the assumption that it had lost a z.” (According to the OED, waygoose is of “obscure etymology.”) Michael Quinion’s generally excellent website World Wide Words also disagrees with the goose theory, and likewise claims that the z was “a result of a mistaken etymology by the eighteenth-century lexicographer Nathaniel Bailey,” and concludes, “In particular, despite the entry in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, it is not a dialect term meaning ‘stubble-goose.'” He doesn’t say what gives him this conviction; perhaps it is enough that its origin hasn’t been proved, or perhaps it was reading the OED. Interestingly, the 1921 edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary of English gives this definition: “n. [wase stubble + goose] Obs. or Dial. Eng. 1. A stubble goose. 2. A printer’s annual holiday or entertainment.” Obviously, at that time there was a belief that the term could mean the goose itself, as well as the printing festivities. So which came first: the stubble or ways-goose, eaten at the feast, or the peculiar spelling of the event that led people to believe that goose must have been the featured dish? We may never know.

I do know, though, that Quinion is incorrect when he claims that “[t]he term is virtually extinct now.” A Google search turns up all manner of uses of the word, from a printing press and a folk music band in England to a gay bar in Australia to the name of someone’s yacht.

Perhaps the most widely known current use of wayzgoose not related to printing is as the name of the University of California at Irvine’s annual renaissance fair in April. The good folks at UCI were, incidentally, well aware of the original meaning and timing of a wayzgoose (yes, I asked), but they didn’t care: they knew a good word when they saw one, and they helped themselves. But a good number of printers and presses embark on genuine wayzgooses each year, among them the Yale University Press, the Amalgamated Printers Association (U.S.), Gaspereau Press (Canada), and (from 2005) Cambridge University Press. Grimsby, Ontario, has been the site of wayzgooses since 1978, when they were first organized by the Poole Hall Press; they are now attended by printers and booklovers from all over.

My own wayzgoose was all that I had hoped for, thank you. My editor, her husband, and another author on the project drove, more or less into the country, to the Cherwell River, where we punted down to the Victoria Arms pub. You probably have to be British to fully appreciate punting: someone stands in the back of a long flat boat and, with a metal pole, pushes the mud on the bottom of the bank and thus propels the boat down the water, generally at a slower pace than two tired Girl Scouts would portage a canoe over a rocky shore. It is, though, a fine pace for a wayzgoose, particularly after returning from a pub.

However, a wayzgoose is supposed to be an annual event. While I continued to write for Oxford University Press, I didn’t collect any more free air tickets, and others involved with the original wayzgoose eventually lost interest or drifted on to other things. I next contacted my publisher at Macmillan (also in the U.K.), and inquired about the prospects there. After I explained what a wayzgoose was, he quipped, “At Macmillan, we have a wayzduck. That’s where we give you a McDonald’s meal voucher and tell you to take a hike.” Apparently, a commercial publisher was not the way to go, however wonderful a job they did with my books.

Next I tried writing for Cambridge University Press; my editors were in the New York office, true, but it was after all a British company. My chance came at an author breakfast at a large conference. One person in a knot of people I was talking to was introduced to me as the man in charge of dictionaries.

Hmmm, I thought, perhaps he’d be willing to slip it into the next edition, to revive it through exposure. It was worth a try, anyway, so I asked him. And as soon as I mentioned the word wayzgoose, heads snapped up in other groups around the room. I met Andrew Gilfillan, who had attended Cambridge University Press’ last official wayzgoose in 1976. (“The annual wayzgoose had always been a great tradition at Cambridge University Press with strong local connections to East Anglian and fenland folklore. I’m not entirely certain why the tradition lapsed but the occurrence of a wayzgoose is a rare event in this area nowadays—and I would guess there are very few people who would understand what it meant,” Gilfillan later emailed to me.) The CEO from the UK, Stephen Bourne, ambled over. “Oh, are you talking about wayzgooses? Splendid,” he beamed. He had recently changed offices and had found in an old desk a stack of wayzgoose menus and programs dating from the 1800s and 1900s, which he obligingly copied and sent to me the following week. These were my people, all right, and when a few years later I was offered a full-time editorial position, I didn’t hesitate; and I am pleased to report that as of summer 2005, there are plans to revive the annual wayzgoose tradition at both the U.K. and the New York offices of Cambridge University Press.

All this not to boast, though. When I tried to explain to my young son why a wayzgoose was such a special thing, because of the rarity of finding a printing establishment to join, he remarked, “I don’t see what’s so special about it. Everyone I know has a printer in their house.” And he’s right. Many of us are involved with printing in some form or another, printing out documents for work, letters from friends, or photos from digital cameras. So aren’t we all entitled to a wayzgoose? Now that we live and work in heated and lighted spaces, there is much to be said for formally taking the time to mark the end of summer and the coming of fall. Gather some friends (especially ones who don’t have a printer and need their association with you as an excuse) and head out for a picnic and a drive into the country, or whatever other form of celebration seems appropriate. And a happy wayzgoose to you.

For a recipe from 1683 for a sauce to cover a stubble goose, try this link: http://www.harvestfields.ca/CookBooks/001/093/01/066.htm.

[Dorothy E. Zemach is a senior development editor for Cambridge University Press. She is a regular columnist for Essential Teacher, the magazine of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).]

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Works Cited

Campbell, Roy. The Wayzgoose. London: Jonathan Cape, 1928.

Heinricks, Geoff. “Wayzgoose.” http://www.sentex.net/~pql/woodengravers2.html (accessed January 17, 2005).

Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. s.v. “waygoose“; “wayzgoose.”

Quinion, Michael. “Wayzgoose.” World Wide Words, August 22, 1998. http://www.worldwidewords.org/ (accessed November 3, 2004).

Rutherford, Brett. “What on Earth is a Wayzgoose?” Printing News, November 18, 2002.

Webster’s New International Dictionary. Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam, 1921. s.v. “wayzgoose.”

World Book Dictionary. Chicago: World Book, 2003. s.v. “wayzgoose.”

SIC! SIC! SIC!

Nevertheless, apart from a few minor incidents, everyone in the square behaved. For the people waiting outside it, in a line to view Pope John Paul II’s body which stretched for more than three miles, the arms of Bernini’s great flanking colonnades were ahead, like a big stone hug ready to enfold pilgrims and sightseers alike at the end of their ordeal. [From The New Yorker, May 2, 2005, p. 56. Submitted by Edward Dell, West Peteerboro, NH.]

Maumee River Canoe Trip

Join Society staff and members of the Maumee Valley Heritage Association on a 10 mile canoe tour of local history. … Bring your own canoe or kayak, water, and bag lunch. [Submitted by Ginny Crouse, Kane, PA.]

Lapsus Linguae

“…look for the slips of the tongue; the lapsus linguae… the penis is a symbolic tongue, and disturbances of ejaculations a kind of genital stuttering.” Norman O. Brown, Love’s Body

My premature ejaculations are coming

Sooner and sooner these days

Now embarrassing her even more than me.

Please stop to think before you speak, she pleads.

You see men who know how to hold back.

But I always go off half-cocked

Because I don’t know how to hold back.

I can’t even think how to learn

What it means to hold back.

A word is a sneeze to me.

Nothing comes before it comes.

It is its own surprise.

Some clear literal truth

Abreast of its time.

It can’t wait.

It can’t be interrupted.

It can’t not say itself.

Hold your tongue, she urges.

But the test is too hard for me.

So in her course she may be right.

Maybe I should visit the

The, the, the, the therapist

About my untied stumbling tongue

To learn how to learn some know-how

To know how to know how to know

How to delay gratification.

But now get this, cunningly

My bilabial love kisses me

All over again only to spur me

To another conclusion she won’t condone.

So she says we have us a problem here

Of some seminal significance.

To her it’s just like a leaky pen is

Spilling white ink on her pink sheets.

This is the same woman, mind you,

Who, if you’re ready for this, once

Upon a hysterical moment, after

What I can only assume was a delay

For reflection, said right to my face:

You made your lie, now bed in it.

—Dion Kempthorne

In Chaucer’s Time… The Liberating Joy of Do-It-Yourself Etymologies

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt, Friendsville, Pennsylvania

I used to look words up in a good dictionary whenever I was curious about their origins. Time and again, what I found was that words that looked like they were related were in fact completely unrelated, while other words which to the naked eye seemed to have no excuse for anything other than a passing acquaintanceship were in fact on rather incestuous terms.

I’ll never forget the day that the dictionary thumb-indexed its nose at me and said, “Ha! Fooled you! Isle and island are not related words!” Something snapped. If isle and island are not related words, I thought, then what’s the point of going on like this?

After I had recovered from the shock, my indignation turned to resolution. I can do this myself, I thought. And now, when a question arises regarding the etymology of a modern English word, I am proud and delighted to furnish an etymology that I have completely made up. Call it a vice, if you must; I prefer to think of it as an affectation.

Q. How did a smart-aleck become known as a wiseacre? (How did a smart-aleck become known as a smart-aleck, for that matter? But I guess I’m only allowed one question, huh?)

A. As might be expected, neither of the ostensible components of this word are really what they appear. The acre in wiseacre was originally yaeger, which meant ‘fool’ (yaeger is related to jester). And the wise isn’t, etymologically speaking, so very wise at all. It’s actually oise, a goose-related word from Old French which in Chaucer’s time—for reasons I am unable to fathom—was understood to connote sardonicness.

Q. I’ve always assumed that pussyfooting derived from the fancy feline footwork it so readily evokes. But now I’m worried that I’ve been wrong all these years, and my appearance here in your column would seem to confirm that fear. I’m not sure I have the heart to tell my three cats that I’m merely a straw man in a spurious language essay; but pray do proceed with your answer.

A. Thank you, with your kind indulgence I shall.

Q. Not at all.

A. By choosing the participial form, you have saved us some trouble. Pussyfooting is nothing more than a linguistic reversal of the Middle English fussy-pudding, an exceptionally elaborate dish of Chaucer’s time. Folklore holds that a fussy-pudding was usually served in an effort to distract a guest from some unpleasant business (such as a settling of commercial accounts or an early-music concert).

By the sixteenth century, the fussy-pudding had already become a cliché, and it was used by Shakespeare in the same way we might today allude to a “pie in the face.” Cf. this passage from the Bard’s lesser-known comedy I Told Thee So, in which the waggish Insinuo teases his mother as she attempts to conceal a rusty watering-pot from her fastidious sister:

Ah, to see my cherished Source ablush

In fussy-pudding essays wisdom cloak

Would that I with herb and onion(1) held

Olympic bowls(2) to crinkle(3) gauzèd(4) light(5)

[Footnotes omitted. If we have to explain it to you, it really won’t be funny.]

It is in the eighteenth century that we find the first references to someone metaphorically pussyfudding around a delicate issue. Why the reversal happened is, according to scholars, none of our business. In any case, from that point on it was but a short, feline step to the modern spelling.

A. Nobody asked, but I have further decided that our modern phrase greasy spoon bears no etymological relation to the words greasy or spoon. In Chaucer’s time, a grace y spon (literally ‘elegance and space’) was an establishment that boasted beauty and roominess but not, alas, delectable meals. This has come down to present-day English as a term for a low-quality restaurant, and it has been stained by the association with oily utensils—a relevant, if etymologically unsupportable relationship, which by Victorian times had left an indelible mark on the spelling.

Adv. My soon-to-be-published Dictionary of Spurious Wordlore advises that the word pickle is much older than the pickled cucumber. It has, only moments ago, been traced back to the ancient Greek phyklos, which the Athenians used to describe any kind of auxiliary or companion tool, object, or paraphernalium that was habitually found ‘on the side’ of some more important object or objects (phy for ‘on,’ kylos for ‘side’). Thus, in ancient Athens, a sculptor’s dust-brush would have been considered the phyklos to his chisel and mallet.

The word made it (through the usual channels) into English as pickle and survived into the nineteenth century, by which time it was chiefly applied to food, e.g. “a hearty bowl of hot oats and its pickle of fresh strawberries.” [Jane Austen, Perspiration and Persnicketiness.] However, by century’s close the word was in danger of becoming extinct, and its 1897 revival, in the context of publicity for brine-cured cucumbers (“Pickle to Your Sandwich”), was clearly intended by the Lake Michigan Brinesoaked Foodstuffs Company as a quaint display of a near-archaic term. Little did these publicists know that their slogan would grant the term new life as a household word for a brine-cured cucumber—not to mention its eventual extension into a verb. Today, thanks to these unwitting visionaries, we may cure anything at all in brine to make “pickled” tomatoes, okra, eggplant, popcorn, etc. And I suggest we do so at once.

[Jonathan Caws-Elwitt lives in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania with his wife Hilary and a lawn-mowing robot. He (Jonathan, not the robot) has written a handful of plays, a boatload of songs, a gaggle of humor essays and a quorum of magazine and radio ads. He is also the author of several unpublished phone numbers.]

The Passing Game: The Joys and Challenges of Fooling Native Speakers

Michael J. Corey, Bellevue, Washington

In Yentl, Barbara Streisand passed as a man to study the Torah. In Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman passed as a woman to get a job. In Victor Victoria, Julie Andrews passed as a man passing as a woman. Eddie Murphy passed as white in a comedy skit. John Howard Griffin passed as black to write Black Like Me. One of the most interesting challenges, though, and one that is accessible to nearly everyone with enough determination and nothing better to do, is to pass as a native speaker of a foreign tongue.

The passing game is so difficult that it’s only fair to make the rules rather liberal. You have to pass only once per language. It’s not required to maintain your imposture throughout a long encounter; one full minute of actual conversation will do, even if you are subsequently exposed. However, greetings alone are insufficient. To pass, you must comprehend your companion’s thoughts and express your own. Winning is indeed difficult, but the rewards are great: personal satisfaction, as well as confusion on the part of potential employers as to your eligibility for a work visa. This is more than enough, except for those few pathetic, benighted troglodytes who find it odd to spend at least five years preparing for a game that’s over in three minutes.

Although it is a difficult language to master, English is one of the best choices of target for the passing game. This is because few people can be sure what a native speaker sounds like. An individual with a strong Indian accent may know the language better than you or I. A woman with a thick (and attractive) Irish brogue and a man speaking a lovely South African dialect may be native speakers—or they may have learned Gaelic and Afrikaans, respectively, from their mothers. For most readers of VERBATIM, though, passing in English is not an option.

Once I was privileged to attend a class taught by a marvelous professor of French literature. He was charming, witty, and beloved. He had to speak English on occasion to explain arcana, although most of the class was taught in French. It never occurred to me that he might not be an American until one day, when he asked the students a question regarding a subtle semantic point. It may have been the distinction between humanism and humanity, the latter in the ethical sense. In any case, I remember feeling not only astonishment, but admiration as well, for someone who had passed so successfully to that point. It became a minor ambition of mine to do the same, within the painfully cramped confines of my abilities.

I migrated from linguistics soon afterward, but my peripatetic professional life never erased the minor ambition. Here I must offer a disclaimer. I speak four languages rather well, including my native tongue, and I have no facility with any others. I have no special talent. I attribute the slight knack I have for acquiring accents to my very first year of schooling, which was spent in a bilingual school in Paris at the ages of four and five. Evidently that experience knocked my phonological assumptions a bit loose, but my own opinion, on a personal (and inevitably anecdotal) level, is that apart from a little help with French itself, no generally applicable skill was imparted. What I did gain instead was something rather paradoxical: in terms of phonology, I learned to expect the unexpected. I learned to avoid automatic application of the template of my native language to make the sounds of another language “fit.” This general phenomenon, the attempt by speakers of language A to make the words of language B fall into A’s categories, which may be semantic, syntactic, or phonological, is akin to what educators call “interference.” I have also found that I gained no advantage from the Paris experience in terms of learning new grammar or vocabulary. I face the same struggles that others face.

After I graduated, I went to Great Britain to pursue a master’s degree in Destructive Writing. Some four years after saying au revoir to my favorite professor, I was traveling between London and Oxford by train, and I had the good fortune to acquire a seatmate who was très mignonne (she was cute). She was also reading a novel in French.

On the Mistral I might have been intimidated, but here, on linguistic home ground, I swallowed once and said, “Pardonnez-moi; vous êtes française?” (Speaking was enough; tutoyer was out of the question.) Her response delighted me, and we conversed for an eternity that must have lasted 180 seconds, until she commented that my accent was rather unusual—was I from the Midi? (The Midi is southern France.) I had not even thought of my ambition—and here it was, fulfilled! I replied that I was just an American, and her astonishment was all I could have wished. Her friendliness increased, and we had a pleasant ride—tutoyants. (Tutoyer and tutoyant reflect the distinction that exists in many languages around the world between formal and familiar pronouns and verb forms. Vous is formal for ‘you,’ and tu is familiar, so tutoyer means ‘to address in a familiar manner.’ There is a fossilized version of tu in the English thou.)

Sixteen years later I married a Czech chemist. I entered the marriage with a fair degree of interest in the Czech language, and the inclination grew until I was positively supine. On hikes in the Colorado Rockies I found myself panting at 11,000 feet and learning the seven (!) cases and three genders by breathlessly repeating after her, “Žena, od ženy, k ženˇe, na ženu…” (‘woman,’ ‘from [a] woman,’ ‘toward [a] woman,’ ‘at/to [a] woman’). Two years after we met, we visited Prague. I found I could communicate with her friends if I concentrated intensely, but I was tongue-tied with strangers. An interesting aspect of learning a language like Czech, which is spoken by a mere ten million, is that most Czechs have never met a serious foreign speaker. Anyone who makes an effort is admired to a degree both unearned and undeserved. (By way of contrast, does it trouble you, as it does me, how guilty foreigners feel if their English is less than perfect? I’ve even heard my Czech friends admonishing each other: “Now, now—that’s ‘Czenglish’!”)

Four years later we visited Prague again with a lively one-year-old boy, who enthusiastically settled into a 36-hour wake/sleep cycle. At last I could speak fluently with my wife’s family and friends. I was still hesitant on my own in public, but the barriers I faced were more cultural and imagined than linguistic and real. Nevertheless, I tried, and every shopkeeper and tram conductor I met awarded me compliments and said either, “I can speak English,” or, “Sorry—I don’t know English.” Success and failure embraced on the banks of the Vltava.

I did find myself enjoying certain jokes that had meant nothing to me before. I will give an example, with the caveat that the joke is untranslatable. An incompetent zookeeper is finally relegated to watching the turtles during their outings. After lunch his supervisor returns—and the turtles are gone! What happened? “I just turned around, and—frnk!” the poor fellow explains. The closest English equivalent of the vowel-challenged word frnk would be either ‘zoom’ or ‘zip,’ but these words are useless in this context. Both are onomatopoetic words for sounds associated with rapid motion. Frnk, on the other hand, implies quiet or silent escape. I leave it to social historians to explain why Czechs have a greater need than we do to describe the act of soundless evasion. By the way, if you enjoy pronouncing frnk, try combing the srst (‘fur’) on a vlk (‘wolf’), or have a taste of zmrzlina (‘ice cream’).

After another four years we went to Prague again, now with two sons. This time I could explain the three branches of the U.S. government and certain aspects of T-cell attack on viruses, but I still couldn’t pass. I held one long conversation in Czech with a new acquaintance, but when I slipped in the phrase, “…since I’m American,” she replied that, yes, she had realized. I don’t remember feeling disappointment; I was pleased to be communicating at all.

Finally, I was celebrating a Czech Christmas with friends in 2003, and I began conversing with a stranger—in Czech. We spoke for some two minutes before it became my turn to assume my old professor’s role: one of the children near us was reading a book, and I had to ask the meaning of vaˇcnatec (‘marsupial’).

This time the response was at once embarrassing and gratifying. My new friend turned and shouted to the whole room: “Hey, there’s an American here who speaks Czech very nicely!” (“Hele, tady je Ameriˇcan co umí moc hezký ˇceský!”) Since everyone else knew me, there were a few giggles, as well as a certain muted, but generous, assent. My companion may have embarrassed me, in the kindest possible way, but she was not daunted in the least. We discussed history, motivation, techniques, English, Czechs, Socialism, America, Iraq, Beneš, the Sudetenland, slivovice…

From hard experience in the trenches, then, I have this modicum of advice to offer regarding the passing game. My two successes were both accidental, but if you want to try to win the game: find suitable surroundings and a topic of conversation with which you are very comfortable. Listening is the essential skill; you may be able to cover up a slow response by pretending to be thoughtful, but if you can’t understand the language at native fluency, you have little hope of success. Streaming news feeds on the internet are a valuable asset in this area. Finally, you have to have a good, critical ear, and your accent has to sound perfect to you. If you receive plenty of feedback from natives and apply it diligently, one day you will reach the point where you sound like a native to yourself. You are not a native. Unless you are one in a million, you will still sound odd to native speakers. Those last few phonetic habits are virtually impossible to discard, even with a whole lifetime to spend on them. For most people the distinctions are difficult even to hear. It pains me to think of the time I have spent repeating shiriai deshoo (‘it’s probably an acquaintance’), only to have my patient Japanese sensei respond, “Stiru notto quiteo righto.” My Czech friend, after 15 years, cannot reliably distinguish among the American English bet, bat, and but. However, if you prepare long enough and work hard enough, it is just possible that you may fool your “opponent” into thinking that your accent represents an actual dialect—rather Orcish, to be sure, but legitimate. In short, you may pass.

And now—well, I’m stealing minutes in the evening, and every day on the bus, to study Japanese. I hope to pass within a year. Mite mimashoo ne (‘let’s try and see’). For some reason, I think my best chance may be a phone conversation.

[Michael Corey is a writer/inventor/curmudgeon living in Bellevue, Washington. His Scientist Errant weblog can be found at errant.scienceboard.net.]

CORRIGENDA

We regret misspelling Thora van Male’s name in XXX/2.

Bats

David Galef, University, Mississippi

“‘He’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic,'” read my nine-year-old son in a British kids’ book the other day. He looked up from the page. “What’s that mean?”

“It means he’s not playing with a full deck,” I answered, not thinking clearly because I hadn’t yet absorbed my matutinal caffeine.

His brow furrowed. “How can you play with cards missing?”

“That’s the point. You can’t.” I arose triumphantly to pour myself a cup of coffee. “You also can’t play well if you’ve lost your marbles.” I took a restorative sip. “You can’t function if you’ve got a screw loose.”

My son looked hard at me. He’s usually swift on the uptake. “You mean crazy? Or just stupid?”

“That’s a good question,” I told him in a fine, supportive, parental way. I mentally tried out a few well-known ones: mad as a hatter, for instance, from the mercury compounds that hatters used to stiffen furs into hats. Prolonged exposure to the mercury caused neurological damage; hence the figure of the mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland (though most people’s image of him comes from the accompanying illustrations by John Tenniel). But some other expressions I cherish evoke a clouded brain, like toys in the attic and bats in the belfry, both of which deliver a fine Gothic feel. Bats in the belfry is often reduced simply to batty or just plain bats—definitely crazy, which is to say lunatic or looney tunes. The word lunatic itself derives from the notion that some people go crazy during the full moon, which is also why some folks are termed moonstruck. I mentioned all this information to my son, who knew some of the expressions, though not their origin.

“Yes, I know, but—”

“Gone off the deep end—you know that one?” I interjected. “Think of a pool, and you dive into the area where you’re not supposed to swim, and now you’re submerged, unable to reach the surface again.” But I didn’t want him to become an aqua-phobe, so I hurried on. “In fact, now that I think of it, a lot of these expressions have to do with not being in the right place.”

“Like what?”

“Well, around the bend or off the rails. Think of a railroad car that’s gone astray. Sometimes they say off one’s trolley or rocker. And loopy: that may have to do with just going around in circles.” But did that explain screwy or screwball? I gazed into the middle distance. The coffee was doing its work. Something about insanity or just eccentricity makes people want to elaborate, as if mad came up woefully short, and one had to mime chewing the carpet, an action that a friend of mine playing charades once used to convey Hitler, or twirl one’s forefinger at one’s head and trill “Cuckoo!”—though apparently the term comes not from any clockwork bird but from the live bird that repeats the same silly note till you want to throttle it.

You can observe a whole range of being off-kilter, starting with eccentric, quirky, and queer, though this last term was once leveled against homosexuals as a term of opprobrium and then appropriated by them as a semi-badge of honor. More out there are wiggy, from the expression to flip one’s wig, and dotty, from doting too much, in an epoch when fond was equated with foolish. Ditzy (dizzy + dotty?) and daffy (from daft) come later, along with wacky (to have been hit or whacked?). Far more serious is stark, staring mad (which should really be stark staring mad, with no comma, since stark was originally an adverb), psycho, and ready for the laughing academy—the residence for Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

Along the far end are foods: nutty as a fruitcake, or simply nutso or nuts (nut meaning head, so off his nut means crazy, as with off his chump). In a curious twist (see twisted for deranged), Zadie Smith’s London-based immigrant characters in her novel White Teeth call someone a few raisins short of a fruitcake. On the other hand, since a dotty preacher in Nick Hornby’s How to Be Good is described as one wafer short of a communion, clearly the short of pattern has become endemic. But to get back to food: certain friends of yours may also be crackers, with cracked somewhere in there, the point being that they’re apt to fall apart, which suggests another image, of people falling to pieces. They may also go bananas.

“I know that one,” said my son, who seemed to have been listening to my thought process. “But then how come some people are bad apples?”

“Another realm entirely,” I carelessly explained, rushing on.

Craziness is also no mere sedentary activity. In many manifestations, it’s positively kinetic. Uncle Ned may be crazy as a bedbug, presumably because the critters jump around a lot. For that reason, he may simply be buggy and ought to be sent to the bughouse. Or Ned may be bouncing off the wall, or just off the wall with the verb understood. My own, limited observations of nutters have been of melancholic, immobile individuals, but maybe I need to hang out with more manic types. Alice in Wonderland features not just a mad hatter but a March hare as well, a species also paired with mad as a—, though to associate the rabbit with hopping mad is to confuse crazy with angry. Other energetic animals bespeak madness also, at least to us: crazy as a coot comes from water birds that act outrageously during mating season. Bonkers (like having been whacked?) and gaga (onomatopoeic for what mad people say) both connote no passive, drooling quality. The same is true for running amok (or amuck). You can babble like a brook, even froth at the mouth, possibly from rabies. You can be raving. You might even be, if you’re British, two stops west of Ham, which presumably lands you at a train station called Barking [mad], though apparently it’s not really just two stops. You might even be balmy, or the British-inflected barmy. No wonder that another, calm-inducing term is ready for the straitjacket.

Still, my son wanted to know about stupidity. In fact, my real favorites are more about slow-wittedness, or just the slow: the retarded, the scatterbrained, the witless, the addlepated, those thick as a brick or two planks, or, as P. G. Wodehouse put it, the dim bulbs of this world. Sometime a cause is provided, as in the old expression water on the brain, or hydrocephalic. The Southern version of this state, touched in the head (presumably with the finger of God), often phrased as tetched in the haid, like or simply tetched, is similar. These expressions were cooked up years before the politically correct swooped in and substituted learning disabled or mentally challenged for them. I’m not a cruel man, I swear, but I miss that local color.

In fact, some of the figurative expressions that mean crazy tend to shade over into those that simply connote feeblemindedness. When I want to describe a person not operating on all four burners, I may note that the gears aren’t meshing. Alternatively, I may claim that she’s minus some buttons. Or that she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Or, as I once heard the political satire group called The Capitol Steps describe the mental life of an incumbent, the wheel is turning, but the hamster’s dead. This last sum-up acts as a neat variant for dead from the neck up, nothing’s going on up there, or simply nobody home. Most of these seem innocently derisive: there’s something almost endearing in a being so simpleminded that when comprehension dawns (itself a figure of speech), you could see the penny drop, a metaphor for a vending machine activated by a coin slid into the slot.

“Does that explain things?” I asked my son, a bit breathlessly. I looked into my coffee cup, but none was left. I must have slurped it all between logorrheic rushes.

My son wisely sipped his orange juice. “You know,” he told me, “you’re a little off yourself, some days.”

[David Galef is the editor an anthology of fiction by and for people over forty called 20 Over 40, from the University Press of Mississippi. He’s a professor of English and the program administrator of the M.F.A. program in creative writing at the University of Mississippi.]

EPISTOLA {Brian Robinson}

In Diplomatic Baggage. by Bridgit Keenan, a British diplomat’s wife in Kazakhstan says, “There are some Russian words that we all know without realising it: bolshoi for ‘big’ (Bolshoi Ballet), bistro for ‘quick’ (the story goes that when the Russians invaded Paris after the battle of Waterloo, Russian soldiers in French restaurants always wanted their food served quickly and would shout “Bistro, bistro” until bistro became the name of a place serving meals quickly). …”

Does anyone know whether Bridget is right about bistros?

[Brian Robinson]

[Sadly, Michael Quinion strongly suggests that this story is just a story. Check out his investigation at http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bis1.htm.]

HOW to HUG

Edwin Rosenberg, Danbury, Connecticut

As I grew up, my father told me stories when he considered them appropriate for my age. A while back, when I was around ten and into reading, he said there had been a boy, just getting interested in girls, who one day happily brought home from the library the encyclopedia volume labeled, “HOW to HUG.” I got it.

Recently, refreshing my memory of “superego,” which a now former friend had tossed at me, I noticed that the top of its page [1292] in the dictionary I had grabbed [Random House Webster’s College Dictionary (New York: Random House, 1997)] was labeled “sunspot to supergalaxy.” I smiled: an astronomer’s delight, without doubt. Of course, it reminded me of my father’s story from seventy years ago.

Other dictionaries in the house also indicate the first and last entries on each page, but simply put the first on the top of the left column and the last on top of the right column. Here the insertion of the often insignificant word to frequently produced for me an amusing or thought-provoking connection.

Three days and 1,500 pages later, I had a list of 232 page headings that intrigued me. I had expected more, but proper nouns, abbreviations, and technical terms interfered. Perhaps revealing my ignorance, I could do nothing with “entropy to eolith” [437], “khoums to Kikuyu” [720], “polychrome to polyp” [1010], or even (for shame!) “bustier to butterfly shell” [179].

A few combinations led to highly un-p.c. thoughts: “British to Brobdingnagian” [166], “dago to damage control” [333], “Irishman to irrational” [691]. Sometimes relationships seem to work better if alphabetical order is reversed, as in “chocolate to choose” [231] or “jack-of-all-trades to jailbait” [699]. In cases where a word has multiple definitions, I took whichever pleased me, as in “boss to bottom feeder” [154], where this page’s boss refers to “an ornamental protuberance.” Certain items appear suited for the first part of an analogy test: “participation to party line” [951] or “rollover to romantic”[1126]. Whatever: chacun à son goût.

Here is a sampling of those I liked, with some comments. Pick your favorite dictionary some dull evening and make your own list.

“abacus to Abélard” [2]: he forgot to count.

“all-time to alpha and omega” [37].

“athlete’s foot to atone” [84].

“bogy to Bolshevik” [148].

“C-clamp to celibacy” [210]: whoa!

“cop to copulate” [292].

“Debussy to decent” [341]: Nijinsky in Afternoon of a Faun?

“Democratic Party to denature” [351]: help!

“economy to Eden” [414].

“erection to err” [443]: about that C-clamp…

“fadeaway to fair catch” [467]: for the sports fan.

“flesh to flimsy” [496]: if the spirit’s willing…

“Gawain to geländersprung” [538]: something for the medieval skier.

“gosh to government” [561]: yes.

“human nature to Humpty Dumpty” [635].

“interception to interfere” [680]: which was it, Mr. Referee?

“lie to life insurance” [758]: never!

“Moses to motherland” [855]: in a patriarchal society?

“night letter to Nineveh” [885]: might that have saved it?

“ostracism to ouch” [925].

“placebo to plaintiff” [995].

“tattoo to taxonomy” [1319]: sounds like Lydia.

“taxpayer to tear” [1320].

“tosspot to touch-me-not” [1359]: “Lips that touch liquor…”

“triple play to triumphant” [1377].

“tutorial to twenty-twenty” [1389].

“unicycle to unisex” [1404].

“violoncello to virtuous” [1434].

“whistle to white knight” [1465]: Casablanca, perhaps?

“World Bank to worry beads” [1482]: indeed.

After a while, impossible entries rattled around in my subconscious. Where were “head to toe,” “Aix to Ghent,” “letter to Garcia,” or even “Heavens to Betsy?” And, as I listened to it in my mind, where was “Cheek to Cheek?”

Now I leave the reader, perhaps in need of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, with the final entry: “zoophilous to ZZZ” [1500].

[Although by trade a maths professor—now retired—Ed Rosenberg has for decades enjoyed writing, editing, and nit-picking.]

Don’t Kid the Goldfish: A Linguistic Portrait of My Mother

Kay Haugaard, Pasadena, California

“Now, now, don’t kid the goldfish!” my mother used to say while wagging an admonishing finger. I would hear this as a little girl trying to fast-talk my way out of trouble. If I got too argumentative or annoying, she might issue the directive “Go butter your ears!” before she went back to fixing the meat loaf, but then didn’t everyone’s mother?

Once I got out into the wider world I found that the answer is an emphatic NO! Then, after my parents moved from Oregon to Southern California to retire and I could see them frequently again after over twenty years of separation except for annual visits, I heard my mother’s speech as if for the first time, as though she were from a foreign country, as indeed she was—Canada. As a child I tried to straighten her out that those knitted caps were “stocking caps,” not “touques” (French and pronounced /tooks/). She stuck to the Canadian name.

Actually the Canadian part of her linguistic color was pretty insignificant, except for a little ethnic taunt: “Pea soup and jelly cake give the French a bellyache.” As you might imagine, my mother was not French. She was German.

But most of her colorful expressions—“a scandal to the hootie owls,” “naked as a jaybird,” “mad as hops” (hopping mad?), or (when someone is just about done for) being “just one jump ahead of the coyotes”—could be attributed to her western country life, as could the expression, “You’ve got to get the cow to get the calf,” which I recall her using when a boy who came calling on me was especially nice to her.

Her language was always redolent of simple, direct physical experience and short on rarefied abstractions, which are frequently the legacy of a more formal, bookish education. Mom—Catherine Mary Rink Johnson, or Katie, as she was frequently called—graduated from grammar school at thirteen and went directly to work in a soda fountain. There wasn’t money for foolishness like high school for a girl in her large (seven children) family in 1921.

Higher education or not, I think my mother’s main interest in words was not as ornaments but as simple. utilitarian implements. She couldn’t have agreed more with that saint of literary style, E. B. White, who bluntly advises, in Strunk and White’s classic The Elements of Style, “Avoid fancy words.”

Though I can trace tidbits of linguistic color in her speech to certain regions and time frames in which she lived (“the cat’s pajamas,” “the cat’s whiskers”), most of her unique style seems just her own. Though her first language had been German, I don’t recall her using many German words in her speech, once more intuitively adhering to White’s dictum to “Avoid foreign languages.”

To Mom the family was a “tribe.” (“The whole tribe is coming over.”) The little town we lived in was a “burg.” On days when she went to town to shop she’d just “pick up” the house and give it “a lick and a promise” because she was “busier than a cranberry merchant.” Then she’d put on her shopping “getup,” being careful that her skirt was down smoothly and not “hiked up” in back. She never wore big hats because they made her look “squatty,” nor did she get “all decorated up like a Christmas tree” or load herself with jewelry and go “prancing around like a circus horse.” She “kept the road hot,” going the thirty miles to Klamath Falls (Oregon) to shop and pick up supplies for my father’s automotive repair shop.

Prices were “higher than a cat’s back” and she had to walk “until her ankles smoked” to find what she needed. When she got home she’d go in to change her clothes, saying “I’ll just get out of this harness so I can scrape something up for dinner.”

Sometimes, when she had “plumb forgot” to get hamburger or something for the Spanish rice, she’d send me to the local store so that the meal wouldn’t be “a complete fizzle.” Daddy wasn’t “persnickety,” but he drew the line at Spanish rice without meat. She’d warn me to wear my coat because the weather was “treacherous” and not go wandering off “clear to Skamokawa,” forgetting what I went for like a complete “fizzlewit” or “flibbertigibbet.” If the Spanish rice was scorched a little she would dish it out unapologetically, saying, “It’ll fill a hole,” an adage learned at her German mother’s knee. After dinner she’d sit back with a groan and say, “I just feel stuffed both ends and six ways.”

When the willow leaves on our lawn got “thicker than hair on a dog’s back” Mom might go out and rake them up even if she had a cold and felt “weak as a cat” because “a change of work is as good as a rest.”

Could I, a Girl Scout, go off on an overnight trip with the Boy Scouts? “In a pig’s eye!” she’d say, or more enigmatically, “In a pig’s valise!” (Valise? Don’t ask! I’m just reporting what I heard.)

But the glowing diadem of my mother’s earthy speech was her verbs, which were right in harmony with White again (“Write with nouns and verbs.”). Writers know that verbs and nouns are the meat and potatoes of the language. Mom’s were nothing if not meaty.

They weren’t necessarily unusual words, regional idiom, dialect, foreign, or old-fashioned. They were just lean, vigorous, muscular, and active to the max. (Strunk: “Use the active voice.”) I don’t think my mother ever used the passive voice in her entire life. For people accustomed to more politely bland verbs, these robustly physical examples may fall on the ear rather startlingly—all the more likely because she used them for the most mundane sentences, rather like an overpowered engine in a tiny, tinny car.

“A woman tackled me in the laundry room the other day…” she said to a gentleman acquaintance and me one day.

His eyes grew enormous behind his bifocals. He snatched his pipe out of his mouth. “She tackled you?” he asked incredulously, and I could see a scene of two elderly ladies wrestling on the laundry room floor roistering around in his head.

I laughed because it was a classic example of Mom’s verbal overkill. Anyone else would have genteelly stated, “A woman came over and spoke to me in the laundry room.”

Let me share with you this annotated list of some of my mother’s more colorful verbs.

Blat: A pejorative term for talk. Somehow that final consonant really gives the feeling of the wildly flapping tongue, as in “She just blats her brains out.”

Buck: To protest vigorously. “When I asked Daddy to mow the lawn he bucked.” “When he got the bill for fixing the car he really bucked.” “I bucked and bucked but pretty soon I gave up and went.” Once again we are given a picture of Daddy or my mother as the leaping, kicking, curvetting, sunfishing bronco, trying to dismount a pesky rider sticking to its back.

Bum around: To wander around aimlessly without accomplishing anything but generally wasting one’s time rather pleasantly. “We spent the whole day bumming around Klamath Falls.”

Camp: To stay longer than one should. “Just ‘cause they invited us for lunch didn’t mean they wanted us to camp there.” “If you give him the least bit of encouragement he would just camp here.”

Corner: To confront, approach (see also tackle and jump). “The salesman had your father cornered so he had to buy the car.” “I cornered him in the grocery store and asked about his wife.” A good example of the “overkill” style. I envision a nervous, sweating individual, “cornered,” heart pounding wildly, looking to either side in an attempt to escape.

Crawl in: To go to live with, as a last resort. “When you don’t have any place else to go you can always crawl in with relatives.” The demeaning posture, the downtrodden picture of someone on hands and knees, suggestive of abject failure and humiliation.

Crawling: Approaching. “She’s no spring chicken, she’s crawling close to fifty.” Evocative of someone on his/her belly, crawling along toward fifty or some other unpleasant place.

Flicker: To blink. “When he asked them for $42,000 he didn’t even flicker.”

Flittin’: Going from one place to another aimlessly. “She’s always out flittin' around.” Seems to be a feminine verb and slightly pejorative. Real men don’t go out flittin' around. (Also see skonniving.)

Growl: To complain (see also buck, rare up, squawk). “People wanted some rain, but after two days of it they started growling.” “He was such a big baby the nurses growled when they had to carry him.” Evokes a dog with curled lips, bared fangs, and a menacing rumble in its throat. A strong image for such mild situations.

Grunt out: To tough out or stick out, neither of which are as powerful as this image of a large, felled hog, lying there grunting in pain through some ordeal—maybe giving birth to a litter of hoglets. “When there’s nothing you can do about it you just have to grunt it out,” Mom said philosophically.

Guzzle: To drink an alcoholic beverage. Not applied to milk, water, fruit juices, or soft drinks and not confined to large quantities or rapid drinking. In my mother’s speech alcoholic beverages of all kinds, from the smallest quantity, were guzzled. “He guzzles a whole can of beer nearly every day.” As you might imagine, Mom almost never guzzled any alcohol, mainly because she disapproved of it but also because it made her “woozy.”

Itching: Eager. “He was just itching to start a squabble.” The metaphorical image is of someone nervously scratching here and there in anxious anticipation of a good, adrenalin-rushing fight. (Strunk: “Put statements in positive form.”) Rarely used negatively, as in, “I’m not itching for the hot weather to start.“

Jump: To approach, confront (see also tackle). “I jumped him for the twenty dollars he owes.” “I jumped the mailman for some stamps the other day.” The only attack my five-foot mother made on people was with vigorous verbal hyperbole.

Land: To get, obtain (see also snag). “She landed a real good meal ticket.” (Translation: she married a well-to-do man.) None of this namby-pamby stuff like “She married a good husband.” Like snag, this tautly tensile verb derives from fishing and presents a picture of a man with a fishhook impaled in him as he flails in a vain attempt to free himself while being carefully drawn in and “landed.” Definitely a pre-women’s lib word, but then, my mother was a pre-women’s lib sort of woman.

Land on: To correct, punish (see also tie into and sit on). “Their mother should really land on those kids. They just hang around looking for trouble.” “Aunt Maggie really landed on Uncle Joe when he came home after guzzling beer.” Whether physical or psychological, to land on someone means to attack him or her with your whole power, as dropping on from a height.

Peddle: Synonymous with ‘say’ or ‘tell’ but connoting trickery or dishonesty. “They try to peddle that he quit his job, but everyone knows he was fired for boozing.” Also used hyperbolically, as in “They tried to peddle their daughter to him because he was a good meal ticket.”

Plunk down (see also squat): “She just comes right in and plunks herself down.” “He walks in and just plunks down $58 dollars for it.” It would be so easy (and ordinary) to say sits down or puts down, respectively, but that would be too mild for Mom. Plunk has a nice onomatopoeia which suggests action through sound.

Poop away: To waste by dispersing carelessly in small, numerous increments as if in a vapor. A vulgarly evocative metaphor. “Some people never learn how to save money, they just poop it away as soon as they get it.” “She can poop away money with the best of them.” “He just hangs around the pool hall and poops away his time.”

Put out: To disperse information of probably a spurious or misleading nature propagandize, or disinform (see also peddle). “They just put out that to scare you. You corner your doctor and he’ll tell you that people need salt.” It has a connotation of “putting out” pellets, as of rodent poison.

Rare up: To object strenuously to something or rise to a confrontation. What one does just before one “bucks.” “You daresn’t even walk across her lawn or she’ll rare up.” “When her husband had a little nip she really rared up.” Obviously part of western culture, derived from the behavior of a horse.

Rope in: To coerce or psychologically pressure. “Before I knew it I was roped into being President of the Altar Society.” Contrast the flat, flavorless asked with roped in and its attendant subliminal suggestion of the ladies of the Altar Society riding around my mother in an ever-tightening circle until wham! one of them flings a deft lariat, throws her to the floor, leaps forward, puts a foot on her side, and announces that she will be president for the coming year. How does that grab you for the “active voice?” (Also used in regard to capturing men in matrimony, as a variation on snag.)

Saddle: To burden. “He’s too young to be saddled with a wife and kids.” The country western image again, this time of a young man on hands and knees with a wife and two kids sitting athwart his back, legs dangling down, at the ready to spur him on to success.

Sit on: To tighten discipline. Less vigorous than land on, but similar in concept. “People really need to sit on those politicians every now and then to keep them in line.” “If their parents would just sit on them more, kids wouldn’t be dope addicts.” Certainly a pictorial verb. One isn’t going to be getting out and into mischief or malfeasance with someone squarely sitting on one’s back as one lies face down on the floor. That’s the way I see it.

Skonniving (pronounced with a long i): Wandering around aimlessly, probably looking for some (small-scale) devilment to get into. This word is a mystery to me and I would be grateful to anyone who can shed light on its etymology. A Danish-American friend of mine from Idaho says she thinks she has heard the word. “Daddy and I were just out skonniving around and we thought we’d drop in.” “She’s out skonniving around for a good looking man.” (See traipse, but with more sense of mischief.)

Smell out: To cautiously reconnoiter or case. “Jack was a great salesman. He could really smell out a good customer.” “He was smelling him out about buying his old clunker.” “She smelled him out to see if he had any money.” Dogs sniffing each other to get to know each other. Talk about indelicate and animal-like; talk about vulgarly vigorous. (Strunk: “Use definite, specific, concrete language.”)

Snag: To catch, grab. The fish hook impaled in the violently wiggling fish—usually a man in Mom’s usage. “She snagged him as soon as his wife died.”

Squat: To sit (see also plunk). Used when an unflattering tone is desired. Present tense is preferred, probably an intuitive feeling for immediacy. “She comes right in and squats right down.”

Squawk: Complain. Even more discordant than screech; derived from a chicken’s squawk, a high-pitched, rasping, hysterical sound accompanied by flying feathers, flapping wings, and pecking beaks. Pretty drastic—something to call upon only for superlative effect, but in daily use by Mom. “He squawked when the paper didn’t come.” “If you squawk about the food they don’t want you to come back.” “The neighbors squawked about the trailer park.” (See also growl, buck, rare up.)

Squirm: To attempt to withdraw or disengage oneself from (see also wiggle). The image of a worm. “You promised and you’re not going to squirm out of it.” (White: “Be clear.” I call that clear.)

Stand still for: To allow. What a clearly captured picture of passivity. “People will run you ragged if you stand still for it.” “He won’t stand still for his wife working at that kind of a job.” Probably derived from the horse who stands still while being saddled (with a wife and kids?).

Tackle: To confront, approach, encounter (see also jump). “I’ll tackle her about it next time I see her.” Evocative of football tactics; adds color to the most mundane pronouncement. “No, I couldn’t tackle an enchilada.” “The salesman would tackle you right on the street before you ever got in the store.”

Tie into: To attack vigorously. Similar to land on in reference to human beings but also in relation to jobs. “Don’t bother with those dishes. I’m going to tie into the house tomorrow.” “I really tied into the yard today.” “He hardly got in the house before she tied into him.” Not metaphorical that I can detect, but wonderfully direct and unvarnished.

Traipse: To wander aimlessly and uselessly. “We just traipsed around town all day and didn’t get a thing done.” (Similar to flittin', but with more continuity and less energy. Similar to skonniving, but with no sense of mischief. See also bum around.)

Wiggle: To attempt to get out of something. “You’ve got to do it. There’s no wiggling out of it.” “He said he’d do it, then he tried to wiggle out of it.” A picture of a slippery hula dancer comes to mind, or a Vaselined snake popping forth from the hand.

As can be seen, my mother did not favor puny, wan, through a glass darkly glimpsed verbs five times removed from their concrete referents. No need to trace their etymology through Old English, Old Norse, Roman, Greek, and Sanskrit to find out just what the heck they really meant. Mom’s verbs leap, plunge, and buck in everyday English. They are unprocessed, unrefined, whole-grain verbs with the natural vitamins, minerals, and bran left in them and frequently have more linguistic nourishment than many “refined” verbs polished to such smooth abstraction that they produce no sympathetic muscular twinges or twitches and conjure no colorful connotative imagery. My mother’s verbs could teach the more sophisticated writer or speaker a thing or two. It’s possible that White would say to her, “Do not overstate,” although I doubt it. More likely he would simply chuckle approval.

[Kay Haugaard wrote “Take a Left on Sore Finger Road for VI/4].

Checking In/Checking Out: Hotel Slang of the 1950s

Louis Phillips, New York City

Every once in a while, I stumble across an out-of-the-way book that contains not only colorful stories but also colorful slang terms not included in the usual slang reference works. One recent discovery was a 1957 Pyramid paperback—I Was a House Detective, by Dev Collans with Stewart Sterling.

Dev Collans, who started out as a bellhop and then worked his way up or sideways into becoming a house detective for a hotel in Boston, tosses out such unusual terms as Bathroom Bertha, Comeback Kid, and Lobby Lice. He even mentions a burglar’s tool that he calls an outsiti. The term outsiti appears in no unabridged dictionary that I have consulted.

The term Lobby Lice is fairly obvious. It is merely a variation on the more common term Lounge Lizard. Lobby Lice and Lounge Lizards (nice use of alliteration there) refer to persons who try to spend their days and/or nights seated in comfortable chairs and couches in the lobbies of fashionable hotels. They are not occupants or guests of the hotel—merely outside persons looking for a comfortable place to rest.

But what kind of person is a Bathroom Bertha? Well, he or she is a hotel guest who, in order to avoid tipping the bellhop, rushes into the bathroom as soon as the hotel room door is opened. Here is how Mr. Collans describes such a character: “Many times I’ve had a guest beat me to it, by dashing into the bathroom the instant the door to the room was unlocked. From inside the bathroom would come a muffled, ‘I’ll see you later, Bellboy.’ Never, to my recollection, did one of those ‘Bathroom Berthas’ ever ‘see me later.'” There are probably some of those cheapskates still around.

Comeback Kids, on the other hand, may be out of business these days, because their method of operation took place at a time when hotels issued keys to their guests, not the computerized plastic cards now in favor. In the book, this thief or room rifler is described as follows:

A Comeback Kid was a room-rifler who operated by the simple procedure of checking in and checking right out again the next day but ‘forgetting’ to turn in the room key when he left. A day or so later he’d come in again, play safe by phoning the room to make sure the new guest was out, then the Comeback Kid would simply go up to the room, unlock it as if he still belonged there, rifle the luggage at leisure. (p. 11)

It is the old-fashioned use of keys in major hotels that brings us to the curious word outsiti. Hotels once advised their guests that, if they wished to feel safe in their rooms, they should keep their keys in the lock. Such an action would foil anyone trying to use a key to gain entry to their rooms. However, thieves—being what they are—invented a clever contraption that could be inserted into the keyhole from the outside and used to turn the key to unlock the door. Mr. Collans defines it as “a thin-nosed, tweezer-type pair of pliers with tiny concave lips. It was small enough to be shoved into a keyhole; the miniature lips could clamp around the end of a key. With the outsiti, the creep could open a door even when the key had been left in the lock in accordance with the hotel’s official warning.” (p. 32)

Outsiti, however, is an unusual spelling for the tool usually known as an outsider. Outsider as a burglar’s tool is, in fact, in the OED, and the OED includes a citation from the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch of January l5, 1896: “The burglary must have been well planned. Three of the doors…were opened by means of outsiders.”

Perhaps outsiti was a misspelling? A misprint? Or simply New England vernacular? Anyone who knows the answer may be up to no good.

[Louis Phillips lives and writes in New York City.]

CORRIGENDA

We published the wrong grid for the anniversary crossword in issue XXX/1. If you need the right grid, it is available on our website at http://www.verbatimmag.com. If you solved it without the grid, we are in awe.

HORRIBILE DICTU

Mat Coward, Somerset, Britain

No one ever enjoys bad wine, have you noticed that? A statement of the obvious, I suppose, and yet it can’t be that obvious, because otherwise why would “good” and “wine” have become conjoined concepts? Several obituaries of Wim Duisenberg, “the father of the Euro,” noted that his off-duty interests included “Golf, good wine and food.” He was a well-off banker: is it really likely that his preferred wine would have been 78% proof, bottled in Scotland, and supplied with a screw-top? Now, that would have been worth mentioning in an obit!

“Good wine” is a frequently observed pursuit, amongst those famous enough to have their pursuits publicly discussed; I’m not sure I’ve ever read of anyone being interested simply in “wine.” Perhaps the adjective is intended to dispel any suggestion of alcoholism—or, even worse, of pleasure-taking.

People don’t drink “good wine” for pleasure, but in order to exercise their educated palates.

“Email makes illiterates of us all,” the saying goes—or should go, or soon will go, one of the three—but even so I was slightly surprised to find a message from the Encyclopaedia Britannica in my inbox, with the subject line: “Best of both World’s from Britannica.”

That Germanic W at the start of “World’s” reminded me of something. We’ve touched on “Mission Statements” before, but I thought you’d enjoy this one, belonging to a company called TNS, who became briefly famous last year as sponsors of a lowly but giant-killing football club: “Total Network Solutions is the leading provider of Converged Communications, Professional and Managed Services to the Enterprise, Public Sector and Service Provider markets, delivering Innovative Lifestyle Solutions resolving Business Issues through the use of recognised quality processes.”

One thing that always troubles me about these upper-case outbreaks, is what are we supposed to deduce about those words which are not thought worthy of a capital initial? Is TNS not confident of its “leading” status? Uncertain of its “delivering” abilities? Unsure of the “quality” of its processes?

Not being a fan of reality TV, I can only suppose it was VERBATIM-inspired serendipity that made me read a newspaper article in which it was revealed that “the Queen’s cousin Patrick Lichfield has introduced a real-life reality show to his stately home.” It seems that tourists will be paying money—“good” money, no doubt—to act as 19th-century servants during their stay, supervised by other servants played by actors. In other words, pretending is considered real-life reality if it doesn’t take place on television, and merely reality if it does.

Further blurring of the (admittedly long-discredited) bourne between life and television occurred when London police raided a house suspected of containing terrorists. A thrilled reporter later told the nation that the police had requested a news blackout during the operation, “because there was a possibility that terrorists could be monitoring broadcast information.” Or, as we used to call it, “watching the telly.”

“The London Geek Girl Dinner is being held to offer an opportunity for girls in the industry to get to know one another and help each other with techie issues etc. Men are welcome but are asked to bring a girl with them.” This was not, it turned out, an ad for the Annual Paedophile Ball, but a gathering of computer professionals—some of whom were men, while the majority were girls. One thing we can say with absolute certainty about the above notice is that it was written by a … well, I was going to say “woman,” but that word seems to be considered too obscene for mixed company these days. The only time a woman isn’t a girl now is when she’s a lady, or, occasionally, a female. Can any girl reader tell me why?

I know we agreed some time ago that the coinages of TV weather forecasters were just too easy, but I’m sorry—I couldn’t resist making a note of this promise from the BBC’s meteorologist: “All in all, then, Tuesday will be a pretty useable sort of day.” And he was right—I used it to write this column. Despite the rain.

CLASSICAL BLATHER: (S)wordplay

Nick Humez, mythsongs@earthlink.net

It is a safe bet that whoever first said that the pen was mightier than the sword was a writer, not a gladiator. The fact remains that swords have been slashing, skewering and hacking their way through history for five millennia and more, and doing a pretty thorough job of it. The only prerequisite was the ability to smelt metal; neolithic technology has yielded plenty of stone arrow- and spearheads (archaeologists are fond of calling them collectively projectile points), axes, and scraping knives, but no stone sword blades. Only metal will do; and even then, making a thin but strong blade that will take a sharp edge and point is a specialty. Anyone, given enough patience and pieces of chert, can learn to pressure-flake a stone projectile point, but it takes a forge to make a sword.¹

The place and time of the first proper sword is shrouded in the mists of antiquity, but it appears to have come about as a lengthening of the Bronze Age dagger.² Curves entered early: Wall reliefs show Egyptian swords that were short (the blade perhaps the length of a man’s thigh) and slightly curved at the end (but with no point; evidently they were intended primarily for slashing.)³ And the semi-mythical Gilgamesh (whom the king-list of the city-state of Uruk gives as its fourteenth monarch subsequent to the great flood)⁴ is likewise depicted in a statue as holding a curved shortsword in his right hand and a very angry lion cub against his chest with his left (the S-shaped blade artfully reflecting the curl of the lion’s tail).⁵

Latin had two principal sword words: gladius, an everyday term apparently of Celtic origin (and eventually handed back across the linguistic fence to become old Irish gleache and the clay- of the Scots’ claymore)⁶ and ensis, a synonym for gladius used almost entirely in literary contexts.⁷ While ensis stayed highbrow and never jumped the cultural fence from Latin to its Romance descendants, gladius triggered a variety of derivatives such as gladiola (originally gladiolus [hortensis], ‘little sword [of the garden],’ source of the French cognate glaïeul) and, of course, gladiator.

English, on the other hand, has but one word for sword (you’re looking at it)—plus a variety of terms for various specialized weapons in that family: the saber (related to the cutlass, both being curved one-side-sharp blades with a point, used on horseback and shipboard respectively) and its Arabic cognate, the scimitar; the broadsword (with which nobility was decapitated as a more genteel improvement on the poll-less beheading axe); rapiers and fencing foils, both of which evolved from the French épée. The word épée derives from the Greek spathê (shoulderblade), via Latin spatha (later spata or spada), ‘shoulderblade; greatsword’—also the source of the standard Italian and Spanish words for ‘sword’ (spada and espada respectively) and as a diminutive, English spatula.⁸

Specialists' words referring to parts of a sword include quillions (the cross-guards on the handle of a Renaissance sword), the foible (the upper part of a sword blade, so called because it was supposed to be weaker; cf. feeble) and fuller (a channel in a sword blade, sometimes erroneously referred to as a blood-gutter), tang (the “tongue” of a sword blade, around which the hilt is attached) and pommel (literally ‘little apple,’ a knob on the hilt of a sword or dagger handle), and annellets (the small rings sometimes extending upward from the quillions as protectors for the fingers).⁹

Much has been made of the primacy of the cities of Damascus and Toledo in the manufacture of top-of-the-line swords since medieval times and even before. Both centers made swords from wootz steel, a high-carbon alloy originally discovered in India around 500 B.C.E.¹⁰ Forged by repeated folding and hammer-welding into multilayered blades, such swords combined great flexibility and a durable edge. Wootz reached China by 400 A.D. and Japan two centuries later. The Chinese also invented a method of selectively heat-treating the edges of their swords which the Japanese, thanks to imported Chinese and Korean smiths, learned and refined to a fine art as both a decorative and practical feature of the katana,¹¹ the sword that would become the principal weapon of the samurai warrior.

Western society nowadays sees few swords save as ceremonial regalia¹² (Marines, Masons, Knights of Columbus), in private or museum collections, on stage and screen, or in reenactments by such organizations as the Society for Creative Anachronism. On the other hand, sword proverbs and popular references abound: There are two columns of entries in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (antiquity’s Sword of Damocles, the biblical beating of swords into plowshares, the terrible swift sword of the Republic’s battle-hymn, and 55 others),¹³ while Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable gives another 15 plus a list of two dozen swords whose names have become legendary (King Arthur’s Excalibur, Siegfried’s Balmung, Roland’s Durandal, the Cid’s Tizona).¹⁴ Meanwhile, science fiction and fantasy have postulated new and wonderful variations on the theme, with special effects to match: Perhaps one might imagine the Star Wars movies without the spectacular light-sabers of the Jedi Knights, but even were all the duels replaced with as many detonated spacecraft,¹⁵ the hexalogy wouldn’t seem anywhere near as much fun.

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BIBLIOGRAPHIA

The VERBATIM office has been deluged with new books recently—even more so than usual. Luckily, this fresh flood has been much more pertinent than many of the waves that have come before (just in case you are wondering, no, VERBATIM does not review literary criticism, textbooks, novels, pedagogical translations, or poetry chapbooks, and if you send them anyway we just donate them to the local university library).

The first is a new edition of John Langdon’s Ambigrams (0767920759, Broadway Books, $14.95). John has occasionally let VERBATIM reprint some of his ambigrams (illustrations of words that read both right-side-up and upside down). The pleasure of ambigrams is the lovely aha! moment when you do look at one “the other way” and see the same word (or, often, an appropriately opposite word) looking back at you. Because, even though you know the point of the whole book is that this happens, you enjoy each one as a fresh surprise.

This new edition includes some excellent material on how John develops his ambigrams, as well as 16 pages of color versions, and an introduction by Dan Brown. (Yes, the Dan Brown of The Da Vinci Code. John did some wonderful ambigrams for Brown’s earlier work, Angels and Demons, and Dan named the hero of TDVC after John.) The A&D ambigrams are also reproduced in this edition. Highly and enthusiastically recommended.

Another highly recommended new title is Barbara Wallraff’s Word Fugitives: In Pursuit of Wanted Words (0060832738, Collins, $14.95). Barbara, who is a contributing editor at the Atlantic Monthly, and who referees the Word Court column in that same magazine, has rounded up hundreds of “there’s-gotta-be-a-word-for-it” words, including what you should call that confusion that happens when a cell phone rings and everyone checks to see if it’s theirs (pandephonium), and the name for plastic shopping bags that are caught in trees (fouliage).

Barbara didn’t hesitate to call in outside advisors (including P.J. O’Rourke, Allan Metcalf, Roy Blount, Jr., Bill Walsh, Anne Fadiman, Faith Eckler, Paul Dickson, and me) to provide little asides. And in addition to the captured word fugitives, there are wonderful sidebars all the way through giving lists of related words, mild quizzes (I say mild because you don’t have to flip to the back of the book for the answers, which I always find annoying—if you’re going to do that, why not just give me a no. 2 pencil and a timer, too?), and other word curiosities that were just too good to leave out.

One of the word fugitives Barbara brought to justice was an English word for the French esprit de l’escalier or the German Treppenwitz—the wonderfully scathing remark you come up with when its target is already driving away. The candidates included retrotort, stairwit, and tintiddle, but Barbara gave the palm to afterism. If you’re tired of only thinking of your afterisms, well, after, Mardy Grothe’s new book, Viva la Repartee (0060789484, Collins, $14.95) might help you, as it contains hundreds of actual, not after-the-fact, comebacks, witticisms, and retorts.

One of my favorites collected here recounts what Prince Rainier III said when asked (on a tour of the Astrodome, in Houston) if he would like to have a nine-acre Astrodome in Monaco. “Marvellous,” he said. “Then we could be the world’s only indoor country.” (His interlocutor, being a Texan, probably took no notice.)

Another anecdote gives George S. Kaufman’s answer to a question posed to him at the Algonquin Round Table one day, during a discussion of suicide: “So, how would you kill yourself?” Supposedly Kaufman sat in thought for several moments before answering “With kindness.”

All done up in Oxford drag (although not, sadly, an Oxford title) is another satirical dictionary. This one is called The Uxbridge English Dictionary (Seventeenth Edition [Approx.] Completely Revived) (0007203373, HarperCollinsEntertainment, £7.99). Possibly every UK reader of VERBATIM is already tired of this book of wackinitions (including chary ‘rather like a chair’ and egocentric ‘the yolk’) but readers elsewhere are sure to find them inspired and chortlesome, at the least. Who wouldn’t wish that emboss was actually defined as ‘to promote to the top’ or wouldn’t at least smirk when hearing indelible defined as ‘a person who cannot be persuaded to eat bagels’? Most of the humor translates fairly well (e.g. five-a-side ‘to kill a boy band’) although some may require some knowledge of current UK events (why is Jasmine ‘Kenny Ball’s band’ funny? Only the Brits know).

EPISTOLA {Mike Dion}

I am vexed, vexed I tell you, at the disappearance from common usage of the article “an.” I realize there are more pressing issues out there, but this one assails me on a daily basis: at work, on public transit, heck, on National Public Radio (especially during Pledge Drive). Don’t people realize that by using “a” in front of a vowel-fronted word—two glottal stops in a row!—they help propel the English language along on its inevitable downward spiral to becoming a series of barely intelligible grunting sounds. I mean sure, Keanu Reeves is very successful, but what about the rest of us?

It’s even worse than the prevalence of the unnecessary additional noun in the phrase “these ones” (I shiver just typing it) . . . I had to leave my part-time job at the shoe department over that one (I gave “conflicting schedules” as the reason, not wishing to give the appearance of a grammar snob).

Anyway, I hope it’s not just me. I send this along hoping to find a sympathetic ear, especially since James Kirkpatrick won’t return my calls. Which, come to think of it, is probably just as well.

[Mike Dion, Portland, Oregon]

EPISTOLA {Michael T. O’Neill}

Reading Jessy Randall’s essay on participatory humor (VERBATIM XXIX/3)was fun and brought back memories of the participatory jokes that most of us told when we were children. One of my favorites was an earlier example of the dickfer joke from Spies Like Us. The key word was henway. The jokester would work henway into a couple of sentences like: “We could do it today, but we’d need a henway or two to get the job done.” The trick was to work in henway until the listener asked, “What’s a henway?” After a pause and a puzzled look, the jokester would reply, “About two to three pounds.”

Another one I heard when I was stationed in San Juan, Puerto Rico, during the early sixties is a count joke. The perpetrator begins with una chalina, ‘one cravat or tie,’ pronounced /una chalinda/ (the d probably intrudes to make the transition from n to a go smoothly). The butt of the joke replies dos chalindas, ‘two ties.’ The final s is pronounced as an h sound, an almost imperceptible breathing. The reduction of final s to a breathing was a common speech pattern in unstressed syllables at the ends of words. The game continues until the butt of the joke reaches eight: ocho chalindas, at which point everybody laughs and points their fingers. The phrase translates as ‘eight ties,’ but also sounds like O chocha linda, ‘O what a beautiful cunt!'; and the joke is sprung. A slang word for vagina at the time was chocha, probably a feminine version of chocho, a vulgar usage frequently glossed by Spanish dictionaries as ‘vulva.’ The uaccented vowels at the ends of both words would likely reduce to schwas.

[Michael T. O’Neill, Arlington, Texas]

Anglo-American Crossword No. 102

Across

1. You plan defenses guarding elevated area (6)

5. Getting a fresh start, a metal-head? (7)

10. Improved trap’s good for a mollusk (9)

11. Lustrous black scarf (5)

12. Hot R&B beat (5)

13. Company uncovered deception, conspiracy (9)

14. Distributes election materials after the 1st (6)

16. Typical lunch item in Minneapolis and Wichita (8)

18. Doubtful The Saint is confused (8)

20. Candy’s a cheater (6)

23. Just disclose one pair of allegations (9)

24. Daltry, of The Who and Yes (5)

26. Western parts of the Alaskan interior generally are coniferous forests (5)

27. Secluded residence and estate occupied by 007’s boss (9)

28. The Spanish uniform initially suited American football clubs (7)

29. Scan article; become angry (6)

Down

2. Puzzle model (5)

3. Circus performer’s rifle grabbed by a lion, e.g. (7)

4. Describe majestic Troy following conclusion of Iliad (6)

5. Bounder I contact about expensive auto (8)

6. Silver circle on the rocks? (7)

7. In publishing, submitting a bill (9)

8. John Q. Public entertains them, horsing around (3,2,3,6)

9. “Airtight case? Ha!” snarled mystery writer (6,8)

15. Catalog value of unusual tire clips (4,5)

17. Speaking stimulates profound perceptions (8)

19. Caterer tidied up area overlooking garden (7)

21. Country of Britain nearly fell (7)

22. PM’s heard roars (6)

25. Source of Graham Nash’s grit (5)

Answers to Anglo-American Crossword No. 102

Internet Archive copy of this issue

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1. This is not to say that one can’t make a thoroughly nasty slashing weapon out of bits of volcanic glass embedded in the side of a wooden club, as did the Indians of Central America; and comparable mixed-media bludgeons undoubtedly inflicted grievous bodily harm in the neolithic Old World as well. But with metal it became possible to forge a slashing and stabbing blade that was all of a piece. It is for such weaponry, as much as any other toolmaking, that the prehistoric tribes of Europe are claimed (by, among others, Robert Graves in The Greek Myths [New York: Penguin, 1991]) to have made a habit of hamstringing their village blacksmith so he couldn’t easily run away and join the opposition. No coincidence, then, that the Greek god of the forge, Hephaestos, was said to be lame, although the customary explanation was that his parthenogenetic mother, Hera, chucked him down from the Olympian heights for not much more reason than his just plain being ugly. (On the other hand, he got to marry the stunningly beautiful love-goddess Aphrodite, so things could have been worse. The association of blacksmithing with virility has been the subject of popular lore since antiquity, one example of many being the ditty “A Lusty Young Smith” in Thomas D’Urfrey’s Restoration-era song collection, Pills to Purge Melancholy. Tinkers benefit from this reputation as well, no doubt the more so for being itinerant: Society never saw fit to hobble them, which would undoubtedly have made for chaster morals, but far fewer songs.) ↩︎

2. Arguably the last refuge of the flocculent historian at a loss for facts, a temporal miasma of this sort cannot be pinned down to such mundane reliabilities as radiocarbon dating —in stark contrast to “since time immemorial,” which, according to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable (New York: Harper & Row, 1981, p. 1119), English common law precisely defines as “prior to the reign of Richard I [r. 1189–99].” At sites in Harappa (India), copper swords have been unearthed which have been dated to 2300 B.C.E. (http://www.nationalmuseumindia.gov.in/armour.html), though one must wonder how much they were for fighting and how much for show. The Bronze Age–dagger origin of the sword is recounted in the article “Sword,” Columbia Encyclopedia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975, p. 2670), which goes on to say that it was only when “the more durable iron sword was introduced during the early Iron Age that the sword became an effective weapon.” And the first iron smelters appear to have regarded iron as a pricey novelty rather than a utilitarian one: Clayton E. Cramer (“What Caused the Iron Age” (www.claytoncramer.com/Iron2.pdf), argues that while the Hittites certainly knew how to work iron, at least after a fashion, they made scant use of it, probably because their forges were not hot enough. During the first period of Hittite supremacy in Asia Minor (i.e., between 1680–1200 B.C.E., when their capital was at Hatushash on the Halys River) iron remained a luxury; objects made from it fetched eight times their weight in gold. Metallurgist E. A. Ginzel (“Steel in Ancient Greece and Rome” http://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/def_en/articles/steel_greece_rome/steel_in_ancient_greece_an.html) points out that iron from extraterrestrial sources was probably known as early as 4000 B.C.E.: Chemical analysis of these earliest iron artifacts has revealed “high nickel content … typical of meteorites.” It is also quite possible that the ancients were acquainted with bog iron, a naturally occurring precipitate in shallow swamps (and the ore source for New England’s abortive first ironworks at Saugus, Massachusetts, in the 17th century C.E.) Nevertheless, iron by itself is not as hard as bronze; prior to the development of steel production techniques, iron weapons would almost certainly have been viewed as inferior, for all practical purposes, to bronze ones. ↩︎

3. Andis Kaulins (http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi194.htm) credits the Semitic Hyksos invaders who conquered Egypt shortly after 1700 B.C.E. with introducing the curved sword (khepesh), body armor, and helmets, as well as fostering an increased reliance on horses and war chariots. ↩︎

4. The eighth tablet of the copy of the Gilgamesh Epic found in the ruins of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh describes in eloquent detail how Uta-Napishtim the Distant built an ark and rode out the deluge that destroyed the rest of humanity; its similarities to the biblical Noah story include the releasing of the birds at the end of the storm and the rainbow set in the sky as heaven’s sign that this would never happen again, all of which is told to Gilgamesh during his visit to Dilmun to get from Uta-Napishtim the secret of immortality. Just a century and a half after his death, Gilgamesh was elevated to the status of a god of the underworld, but this only partially explains the durability of the epic, of which copies were still being made in Mesopotamia as late as 120 B.C.E. The story also has a strong appeal as a ripping yarn of heroic exploits, as well as being an edifying story of the humanizing friendship that turned an arrogant king into a decent chap. For a rigorous translation and highly informative introductory essay, see Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 39–153); for a highly readable gloss by a modern poet who ably patches over the lacunae in the original, see David Ferry Gilgamesh, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992). ↩︎

5. Recovered from the palace of Sargon II at Khorsabad and now in the Louvre, this high relief is dated only to the eighth century B.C.E. (It is reproduced on page 67 of the New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology [New York: Crescent Books, 1987; hereinafter NLEM].) However, its iconography may well be a great deal older—particularly if, as a number of scholars have suggested, the episodes of lion-wrestling in the Heracles cycle are derived from the Gilgamesh story. On the other hand, the weapon depicted may be intended not as a sword but a form of sickle, whose use as an offensive weapon figures in such stories as the castration of Ouranos (NELM, p. 88) and the severing of heaven from earth in the Hittite tale of Kummarbi and his offspring Ullikumi, the little stone man who grew to world-threatening size while planted in the shoulder of Uppeluri, the Anatolian Atlas (S. H. Hooke, Middle Eastern Mythology [New York: Penguin, 1991, pp. 96–98]), as well as on a 5th-century B.C.E. red-figured vase from Athens showing Perseus, fresh from killing Medusa, brandishing a sickle instead of the usual shortsword-with-a-hook called the harpê (NLEM, p. 182). ↩︎

6. The –more suffix means ‘big.’ The Scots also have, perhaps not surprisingly, a smaller sword called the clay beg (small sword). A. Ernout and A. Meillet’s Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine (Paris: Editions Klincksieck, 1979) calls gladius “a word in constant use [de la langue courante]… passed on both to Romance languages and to Celtic,” while ensis is an “old word … retained solely in poetry” (pp. 275–76); from ensis were derived the poetic terms ensifer and ensiger, “in imitation of Greek Eiphêrês, signifying Orion” (ibid., p. 197). Ernout and Meillet also suggest (p. 276) that gladius may originally have been a borrowing from Celtic invaders (much as the Romans would later learn the greeting Ave! from their Carthaginian foes during the three Punic Wars of the 3d and 2d centuries B.C.E.); if so, Irish gleache/glaedhe (cognate with Scottish clay) was just making the return leg of an etymological round trip. ↩︎

7. Massachusetts, when choosing the motto for its corporate seal, preferred the fancier word: Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem (“By the sword it [that is, the Commonwealth] seeks peaceful rest under liberty”), a not-too-veiled allusion to the carnage of its last great armed conflict with the native Wampanoags and their allies under Massasoit’s grandson Metacom in the 1670s. (For a balanced, well-researched history of King Philip’s War, as it came to be called, see Jill Lepore’s The Face of War [New York: Knopf, 1998]). ↩︎

8. Ernout and Meillet, op. cit., pp. 638–39. ↩︎

9. These terms and others may be found in a glossary on the Armadillo Armory and Collectibles website http://www.armadilloarmory.com/hxsword.htm, in turn credited to Britannica.com. The Armadillo site’s brief history of the sword points out that “the introduction of firearms did not eliminate the sword but rather proliferated its types. The discarding of body armour made it necessary for the swordsman to be able to parry with his weapon, and the thrust-and-parry rapier came into use.” It was rather the repeating firearm that “virtually ended the value of the sword as a military weapon, though isolated instances of its use continued in 20th-century wars. As it declined in its military usefulness, the sword gained a new role in the duel, especially in Europe, out of which practice emerged the modern sport of fencing.” ↩︎

10. Wootz is a transliteration of the Canarese term ukku. Alexander the Great is said to have acquired a wootz sword during his conquest of the East in the fourth century B.C.E. The Romans, however, do not seem to have ever caught on to wootz smelting; Ginzel (op. cit.) suggests that “the serendipitous actions of forging a lump of the cast iron, that would have inevitably formed at some point during Roman smelting, did not occur. This was either because the Romans were always fastidious about keeping the unmalleable stuff out of their blooms, or they simply did not experiment with the dirty hard little buttons that would occasionally occur in the furnaces. A second possibility might be that the suppliers of the wootz steel kept the process a secret from their western customers.” The latter might also explain why it took so long for wootz steelmaking to reach China. ↩︎

11. Here I have drawn on a brief but nicely illustrated summary of swordmaking in China at http://www.shadowofleaves.com/Chinese_Sword_History.htm. A website page of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/japb/hd_japb.htm) gives a succinct and lucid summary of the process of Japanese swordmaking; for what is perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of the subject, see Inami Hakusui’s Nippon-Tô: The Japanese Sword (Tokyo: Cosmos, 1948), still a classic in its field. Its author’s introduction explains that he wrote the book in large part to educate American veterans and others who had come into possession of Japanese swords as war trophies. An example of both the circumstances and formidable cleaving power of the katana is given in the following anecdote from the website of the San Francisco Japanese Sword Society (http://members.aol.com/sfkatana/): Several Japanese soldiers flushed from a cave by U.S. troops on Iwo Jima “surrendered to Americans by raising their arms in the air. One of them was a 6-foot tall Lieutenant in rank, who was hiding his Gunto Samurai sword behind his back. The sword was not visible to the Americans who came in front of them, because it was tightly back-placed. When one of the American GIs came within 4 feet of him, the tall Japanese soldier pulled his Katana upward & sliced his enemy from clavicle to embilicus [sic]. The American GI’s body was split in half, and blood squirted out in many directions. The tall Japanese soldier was shot on the spot by the other American soldiers. His Katana was kept by the American who stood 15 feet behind his comrade’s split body from April, 1945 to 1987” [sic! sic! sic!] (Not to mention eeeuw!) ↩︎

12. This seems to be a persistence of a class difference inherited from the Middle Ages: Gentlemen wore swords; commoners carried pikes or longbows. A curious if macabre mark of this social stratification persisted in methods of execution: In both England and France down to the 18th century, ordinary folk would be hanged, beheading being reserved for the gentry. This had its inconveniences: Robert Frederick Opie’s Guillotine: The Timbers of Justice, reviewed by Munro Price in the online newspaper telegraph.co.uk (http://www.arts.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/04/20/boopi20.xml&sSheet=/arts/2003/04/20/bomain.html), quotes the complaint of Charles-Marie Sanson, the Paris executioner who would later earn the sobriquet “Keystone of the Revolution,” that “[a]fter each execution the sword is unfit to perform another; it is essential that the sword which is liable to damage be sharpened and reset if there are several condemned persons to be executed at the same time. It is therefore necessary to have a number of swords available in a state of readiness…[and t]he Paris executioner has only two swords.” In the same petition Sanson noted that “the executioner [must] be very skillful and the condemned very composed, otherwise it may be impossible to complete the execution by the sword without the risk of dangerous incidents occurring.” He may have had in mind the botched decapitation of a lady of quality by his father some decades earlier, at the start of the latter’s career. The lad’s first slash was by no means fatal, and only the intervention of Charles-Marie’s grandfather, present on the scaffold as the official officeholder but now old enough to delegate most of the actual dirty work, put the condemned woman out of her agony: Seizing the sword from his son, he struck off her head in one swift blow—his last, for he never again executed anyone else. Two centuries earlier, it had also taken two sword strokes to kill Mary, Queen of Scots, notwithstanding a French executioner had been brought to England for the occasion. Moreover, even a deftly severed head (e.g. of someone guillotined) remains alive for about a quarter of a minute: Dr. Ron Wright, a Florida medical examiner and something of a specialist in the asphyxia resulting from cranial exsanguination (an earlier job in Vermont had him doing postmortems on decapitated snowmobilers), explains that “13 seconds is the amount of high energy phosphates that the cytochromes in the brain have to keep going without new oxygen and glucose” (http://tafkac.org/medical/decapitated_head_blinking.html). ↩︎

13. Page 1316 of the 16th edition of Bartlett’s (Boston: Little, Brown, 1992). ↩︎

14. Brewer’s, pp. 1087–88. ↩︎

15. At the end of the first Star Wars film, no fewer than three names are given in the credits under the heading “Miniature Explosions.” ↩︎