VOL V, No 1 [May, 1987]
Tosspots and Wraprascals
Andrew E. Norman, Palisades, New York
One of the English language’s most colorful and expressive techniques for forming nouns seems to have passed out of fashion over the last century or two. As defined by Professor Leon Lipson of Yale Law School, who introduced me to this word category in 1973, such nouns are composed of a transitive verb followed by its direct object and denote the implicit subject of the verb. I call them “tosspots.”
Even the most straightforward, practical “tosspots” bristle with energy and imagery in comparison with commoner types of composite nouns—breakwater, scarecrow, pickpocket, shearwater (a bird that flies swiftly and smoothly a few inches above the surface of the sea). A toothpick has its primary purpose built into its name, but it is just as likely to be stuck into a canapé, whereas a picktooth springs into action as one utters the word. A flycatcher ‘bird’ knows its job and will do it when it has to, but a catchfly ‘plant’ vibrates with lethal greed. A circuitbreaker is obviously designed to perform its function, but can one rely on it? A break-circuit will do what it says, no doubt about it. A screwdriver promises results but neither tells how it will put the screw in place nor offers to remove it if necessary, while a turnscrew tells its whole story.
These qualities of energy, imagery and succinctness make “tosspots” ideal for invective, frequently with a humorous twist. Here are some particularly rich categories:
Troublemakers: scapegrace ‘wild and unprincipled,’ rakehell ‘lewd and dissolute,’ scarebabe (-bairn in Scotland), drawblood, flingbrand, blowcoal, makebate (as in ‘debate’), stirpassion and stirstrife (why the wildflower loosestrife is accused of this propensity I know not), spitfire and shitefire (though not strikefire, which is high-proof gin). Fusspot may be read either as ‘potfusser’ or as ‘pot of fuss’; similarly, fuss-budget. Such ambiguities are the spice of “tosspot” hunting.
Criminals: cutthroat, cutpurse, suckpurse (extortionist), burngrange (a rural specialist; Absalom ignited Joab’s fields just to attract his attention), drawlatch, pickpocket, and picklock (which is also a tool, and if one could find a pick-wick nowadays those Zippo lighters would last forever). Stretch-halter and stretch-hemp (and stretch-neck, for which the OED cites only Conan Doyle’s The White Company) clearly signify wishful thinking by the speaker, but a stretchrope is only a bellringer, and Stretchlegs is a personification of Death. Frustration of justice is implied by scapegallows, slipgibbet, and sliphalter. A lickhalter is just a knavish wag.
Flatterers and toadies: scrapeshoe, clawback, and scratch-book, suckfist, pickthank(s), lickspittle (also*-spit*) and, possibly, *flattercap*, though perhaps only when he is gushing over millinery.
Parasites: lickladle, -box, -dish, -platter, -trencher, and -spigot (not to be confused with a suckspigot, who comes later).
Contempt for extremes seems to be inherent in the form. If one bends over backwards to avoid such epithets as spend-, slip- or slidethrift, spillgood, or scattergood, one incurs hostile mutters of sparethrift or sparegood, scrapepelf or scrape-good, pinchfist or skinflint (also flay- or fleaflint), pinchgut (usually reserved for a ship’s purser), scrapescall or pinch-, scrape-, spare-, scratch- or surprisingly, sharepenny (share = ‘shear’). But a lickpenny is something that costs too much (as in “Law is a lickpenny, Mr. Tyrrell,” in Scott’s St. Ronan’s). And catchpennies are cheap goods priced for quick sale.
Join your friends in a drink or two, and if you’re not a tosspot or blowpot, you’re a suckpint, suckspigot, suckbottle, or blowbottle. Abstain, and you’re a drink-water (not a catch-water nor yet a spurnwater, which are both kinds of ship’s scuppers).
Heap a second helping on your plate and provoke a chorus of stretchgut, fillbelly, lickfingers, flapsauce, or stopsauce. Make a mess, and you’re a spillbread. A spurncow, however, is neither a dieter nor a vegetarian but a cattleherder (as in cowpoke; spurn = ‘spur’). And a fillpot is neither a glutton nor a sot: the OED gives it, along with filldike and fillknag, as an epithet for the weatherful month of February.
Truly the “tosspot” is harsh on flattercaps and short on flattery. It makes our most dedicated healer a sawbones, Heifetz or Menuhin a scrapeguts. It gives us killjoy and spoilsport (a stopgamble is not a spoilsport but the act of one, just as lickfoot is the act of a lickspit). It ridicules the tattletale or telltale (which can also be a piece of cloth or yarn tied to rigging to indicate apparent wind direction) and the rattletrap or claptrap, to which I should like to add the wagjaw. It exposes the shirking scrimshank, who presumably preserves his legs from unnecessary exertion. A suckegg may be either an avaricious person or a weasel, or just a young person. A cracktryst cannot be relied on, a lackwit should not be listened to, and a choplogic should be avoided altogether. Smell-fungus was Sterne’s pseudonym for Smollett; it was later used by such writers as Washington Irving and Frances Trollope for grumbling findfaults in general.
Not every “tosspot’s” connotation is derogatory, of course. Burnewin is not a wajgaw but a blacksmith (win = ‘wind’). A butcher is a killbuck or killcalf. A chafewax sealed the Lord Chancellor’s documents until the post was abolished in 1852. Screw better expresses prisoners' attitudes toward their guards than the literal and neutral turnkey. Nor is the daredevil inherently evil, though less than unalloyed admiration is implied in tossplume, dashbuckler or swashbuckler. (Note that buckler = ‘shield.’ The corruptly back-formed verb swashbuckle suggests that Errol Flynn buckled a swash.) Simple respect is so ill at ease in the “tosspot” form that I have found only two examples, both obsolete: shunthank(s) and speaktruth.
As for “tosspots” that exclusively denote women, all I have found accuse them of immoral behavior: flingdust and flingstink, and the milder shaketail and wagtail (which is also the name of a bird that performs the gesture in a less suggestive manner).
Rounding out the human “tosspots” are three interesting foreigners. A catchpoll or -pole was originally a chasepoll, a borrowed French witticism equating a tax collector’s pursuit of his prey with a farmer’s pursuit of his chickens (‘poules’). Also from the French comes fainéant for ‘do-nothing,’ though there appears to have been some false etymology at work in this case—the original was faignant, a simple present participle. Finally, shunfield (‘battlefield,’ that is) is attributed to Hobbes, who coined it to translate phugoptolemos in the Odyssey. (A shunpike is not a person but a free road that parallels a toll road.)
There is a cluster of “tosspots” beginning with make-, some of which do or can refer to persons, but their backs are often broken by hyphens, and a first-class “tosspot” retains a hyphen only to clarify pronunciation (e.g. drop-piss, stretch-halter). In one or more of the OED, Webster’s 2nd and the Random House Dictionary, I have found make-ado, -belief, -faith, -fire, -fray, -game, -king, -law, -mirth, -peace, -shame, -sport, -talk, and -way. Makeweight is not given a hyphen, whereas make-work and make-rime are; what ties them together is that they do only what they are said to do—any secondary function forfeits the name. In contrast, makeshifts perform innumerable functions.
Several plants and animals, in addition to those already mentioned, have earned “tosspot” names for various reasons, usually strikingly apparent and often quite whimsical. Several varieties of grass are called dropseed, but only stangury is drop-piss. I have never grown stonecrop; now that I know it as prickmadam I am tempted to try. Breakstone and break-bones are straight translations of ‘saxifrage’ and ‘ossifrage’ (or perhaps the other way' round?). Among the birds may be observed the scaredevil (a swift) and the dipears (I wonder; I have never seen a bird’s ears), and the nicely contrasting cases of the turnstone (which does) and the killdeer (which doesn’t but says it does). The whippoorwill would merit special status among “tosspots” because of its tucked-in adjective if one could be sure it was falsely boasting of its own obsessive sadism rather than odiously begging somebody else to do it or even, perhaps, reporting a crime. There are two fish, the suckstone (‘remora’) and the jumprock (another sucker, native to the southeastern U.S.), and a worm, the lockdor. Spincop is a pleasant name for the spider, though perhaps inferior to ‘webster’ (see Michael Innes’s The Spider Strikes). The only quadruped I have found besides the suckegg (‘weasel’) is the Indian elephant in the elegant, if hyphenated, role of carry-castle.
The “tosspot” is heavily indebted to mariners. In addition to the birds, fish, and objects noted above, it has given us dreadnaught (or - nought) for a formidable ship or war; stop-water, a makeshift devised when proper caulking is impossible; cutwater, which is not only a bird but the bow of a ship, or a rope or cable in front of it, or a construction on the upstream side of a bridge; and halyard, the rope that hauls up a sail—sails having been attached to yardarms when ships were square-rigged.
The rest of my collection are scattered all over the language. After a hearty breakfast, one may seize one’s carryall, holdall, or catchall and board a jerkwater, which was a train that stopped frequently to do just that, consequently becoming an adjective for towns so benighted that no train could be expected to stop there for any other purpose. Lacklustre is strictly an adjective in the U.S., but it is acceptable as a noun for such a condition in England, where stick-jaw is gummy candy, a spitfrog is a small sword and a lockspit is a trench no wider than the tool it is dug with, used to mark (‘lock’) the turf (‘spit’) either to assert a legal claim or to guide the diggers. Breakneck is also usually met as an adjective, but as a noun it means either a fall of that kind or a place likely to produce one. A drawstop on an organ does what it claims. And a scarefly is either a device or an epithet for Jupiter or Beelzebub, according to the OED.
Any “tosspot” hunter is sure to chase up blind alleys. Among those that have deceived me: tipstaff (he may do it, but his title comes from the metal tip on his staff), quitclaim (surprisingly, ‘claim’ is the verb; quit = ‘quits’ or ‘even’), bobtail and bangtail (bob and bang = ‘crop,’ and these are just bobbed examples of humdrum past participle formations), and lockjaw (not conclusively eliminated, but ‘locked jaw’ is given as an alternative form).
There are more than enough pleasant surprises, however, to keep one’s spirits high. Deep from the subconscious suddenly leaps stickum! A stray puzzle supplies wraprascal, a voluminous cloak that could conceal a sword or bludgeon— and leaves one wondering whether a crossword does what it says or merely tells the solver to do it.
This is a serious problem in the world of games. Spoilfive is legitimate, I think, for it is the rules that do the spoiling if a specified sequence of cards does not appear. In the 20th century sport of crinklefender, too, I am persuaded that the game, not the player, is the subject of the verb. I fear the reverse is true in leapfrog, shove-ha’penny, drawgloves and blowpoint (a relative of darts). The names of these games are really directions to the players, like ‘pick-up-sticks’ and ‘capture the flag.’ Nor is sweepstakes a “tosspot,” because the race does not sweep the stakes, the winner does (or used to, before changing social mores added shares for second, third and fourth).
Perhaps the best thing to do with “tosspots” is to make up new ones. The champion is undoubtedly James Thurber, who enriched his beloved language with some twenty-four in one short article called “Do You Want to Make Something Out of It?” (included in Thurber Country and Alarums and Diversions). His contributions range from the grabcheck (‘a big spender, a generous fellow’) to the tossgraver (‘an eloper… a grablass') and the smackwindow (the common June bug, or bangsash). It was here that Thurber introduced the unforgettable “kissgranny. 1. A man who seeks the company of older women, especially older women with money… 2. An over-affectionate old woman, a hugmoppet, a bunnytalker” and “pressgrain. A man who tries to make whiskey in his own cellar; hence, a secret drinker, a hidebottle, a sneakslug.” What makes Thurber’s achievement even more remarkable is that he was not consciously coining “tosspots”; he was losing sleep trying to think of words with specific letter combinations such as “abc” and “sgr” to use in Superghosts.
Surely we need more “tosspots” to strengthen and enliven our language, though not as much as we need more Thurbers. But unearthing old “tosspots” is still rewarding. My latest find is the mysterious flexpeng; not only can the OED give no derivation, it is not even sure it means a gudgeon.
And the rule against hyphens must not be taken too seriously. It might stop us from giving adequate thought to the question of shut-eye: who or what is the subject of the verb? Above all, it would deprive us of Professor Lipson’s doubly unique—negative and imperative—discovery: the forget-me-not.
SIC! SIC! SIC!
Recently elected to non-resident membership in the Overseas Press Club of America was an editor of a Chinese medical journal who rejoices in the name of Young Sick Kim! [K.S. Giniger, New York]
“Till Death Us Do Part”
Archibald A. Hill, University of Texas at Austin
My local paper, the Austin American Statesman, published an amusingly ambiguous headline in its issue for Sunday, January 15, 1978, which read “and until death do they part.” On the following Friday, the Associate Editor, Rowland Hathaway, published (in his column “Close Calls”) an apology for having made a mistake. In the meantime, there had been violent protests from readers. A typical response was that of a parent concerned because children were not taught proper grammar anymore, and that this headline was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” It seems clear, however, that a good deal more of grammar and language structure was involved than merely the use of the wrong pronoun.
To begin with, it is evident that headline writer, editor, and all respondents, recognized that the required meaning was ‘until death parts them,’ not the meaning that the printed form of the sentence seems to have, namely ‘they will part until death unites them.’ Indeed, the story for which the headline was written was about a couple who became united in spite of barriers and would be together until the expected death of one of them from cancer. From the point of view of ambiguity and its resolution, the reaction of readers is clear indication that when there is conflict between the meaning of a narrower context and a wider context, it is the wider one which prevails. But beyond ambiguity, there are other interesting points, particularly in the history of the passage.
As everyone knows, the passage misquoted is from the Book of Common Prayer. The first form of it appeared in the Edward Sixth Prayer Book of 1549, where as the OED points out, it was required that both bride and groom should respond that they married “to have and to hold til death us departe.” The verb at that time could be used transitively, to mean ‘separate,’ and the form here used was without the usual third person singular ending since it was a subjunctive use. Even at that time the position of an object pronoun immediately before the verb was somewhat unusual, and I can only guess that the form of the phrase was chosen to bring out the iambic rhythm of weak-strong, four times repeated. (I am assuming that the sequence “and to” in “and to hold” counted as a single syllable, rapidly pronounced with weak stress, as it is today.)
The first change which affected the phrase was that the transitive use of depart became obsolete in the 17th century, since the conservative Convocation that revised and readopted the Prayer Book in 1662, after the fifteen-year Cromwellian suppression, evidently felt that the meaning of the phrase was no longer clear. In consequence, depart was changed into do part, the form in which we now all know it. The change was ingenious, since the only alteration was of one unstressed vowel, and syllabic structure and rhythm were preserved intact. Evidently, understood or not, the phrase was still remembered after the long interregnum.
A further change has affected the revised phrase, do part. As late as the 17th century, phrases of this type, with do as auxiliary and the main verb as an infinitive, were common variants of the simple verb form, and were often available for rhythmic effect. Thus Shakespeare’s Ariel uses the forms side by side without difference of meaning:
There I couch when owls do cry
On the bat’s back I do fly.
A typical early grammarian of the 16th century says “it is all one to say ‘I do speake…’ and ‘I speake…’ ”The disappearance of the construction as a common usage seems to have taken place in the first half of the 18th century, since Johnson in 1755 condemns the use of do and infinitive as a “vitious mode of speech.”1
In modern usage, unless an author is being consciously archaic, the auxiliary do occurs mainly in a few uses only. One is emphatic and occurs with stress, as in “I do like good music,” or as an assertion after a denial, as in “You don’t like cabbage,” and the reply “I do like cabbage.” Another is the form combined with -n’t which gives a negative that negates the whole sentence, in contrast with other negatives that negate single parts. Thus “You don’t need money” contrasts with “You need no money.” A final use is as a question form, always in the order auxiliary, subject, and main verb, as in “Do you speak French?” This familiar order is the one adopted by the headline writer in “do they part,” though his form is not a question and is inappropriate as a rendering of the Prayer Book phrase.
Another, and very minor, change has also taken place. We still on occasion use the endingless subjunctive form of the verb for unreal, or as yet unrealized situations, but much less freely than did speakers of sixteenth-century English. Thus the English professor to whom the question of the propriety of the headline was referred, rightly said that the modern form would be “until death parts us,” with an inflected verb, and without auxiliary.
A final change is one which still seems to be in progress, and which is not yet universally accepted. This is that the case forms of the pronouns are no longer the sole indicators of actor and goal of action. For pronoun forms such as it and you position is, of course, the sole indicator since these forms have no distinct accusative forms. For the others, accusative forms certainly frequently occur after the verb to be, and for a sequence like “It’s me,” the accusative is probably used at least informally by most Americans, though purists still object. Also, though accusative forms occur only rarely before the verb, the position is then occasionally interpreted as indicating the actor. I remember seeing a widely circulated advertisement some years ago which showed an astonished man evidently replying to an unquoted statement—“What! Me fly my own airplane!” The use here could be described as an indication of a “contrary to fact” situation, as well as the actor, and it is interesting that I do not remember seeing the advertisement objected to by grammarians. Somewhat similarly, for all speakers except those who have consulted dictionaries, the archaic expression methinks is probably interpreted as the equivalent of I think, instead of the historically accurate It seems to me. And finally, the editorial column of January 20th concludes with an ironical apology “Us goofed,” which was fully understandable, but only in terms of positional indication of the actor.
What then emerges from all this complication? One fact is that the short phrase from the Prayer Book illustrates the pervasiveness and continuity of language change, change which the user often does not understand or even realize. And it is interesting that even in these days when we continually hear lamentations over the decay of the old values, readers still value the old forms and protest when they are carelessly mutilated.
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: CAUGHT IN THE WEB OF WORDS: James A.H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary
K.M. Elisabeth Murray, (Yale University Press, 1977), xii, + 386 pp.
Miss Murray has written an engrossing account of the life of her grandfather, James A.H. Murray, chief editor of the 10-volume Oxford English Dictionary. It gives us a picture of the vicissitudes of a dictionary maker. While we have some glimpses of a lexicographer at work in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Johnson’s dictionary took up only eight years of his life; Murray worked at his for 36.
The account begins with James Murray’s birth (in 1837) and his precocious childhood as the eldest son of a tailor in the Scottish Border village of Denholm. His formal schooling ended at age fourteen. At seventeen he became an assistant schoolmaster in nearby industrial Hawick and soon blossomed into a skilled teacher and community leader. This life he abandoned after ten years, to move to London for the sake of his wife’s health. In London, where he worked as a bank clerk, he met men of like interests and joined the Philological Society. His wife died, and he remarried. After six years, Murray again became a schoolmaster, in Mill Hill, outside London. There he enjoyed halcyon days until his conscription as editor of the New English Dictionary (as it was first called), begun by the Philological Society.
Miss Murray describes her grandfather’s entanglement “in the web of words,” his battles with the Delegates of the Oxford University Press over the plan of the work, his years of grinding labor, and finally his recognition and honors. The Dictionary not only made his reputation; it was his life, filling 12- and 15-hour days and six-day weeks, with few vacations, from 1879 until he died in 1915 at the age of 78. Men he had trained completed the work in 1928, 70 years after its inception by the Philological Society. Miss Murray concludes the work with a chapter on James Murray as a husband, father, citizen, and human being.
To gather and organize material for a history of English words and to present it instructively in a ten-volume dictionary was a monumental task, and James Murray was the man for the job.
A lexicographer needs a bent for systematic and careful research. Early in life, Murray took to activities that required and developed this. His classification of flowers, ferns, and stamps by analyzing similarities and differences prepared him to discriminate and organize the senses of polysemous words. His careful examination of Roman antiquities in the Border country alerted him to the need to make one’s own investigations rather than rely on the reports of others. As a lexicographer he would not accept as fact any statement that could not be proven. This led him to discover errors and even non-existent words in earlier dictionaries. In this respect Murray was the opposite of his predecessor Frederick Furnivall, whose standard of scholarship was quantity over quality. Of the material collected for the Dictionary under Furnivall’s direction, only a tenth could be used.
A dictionary maker also needs staying power. Murray had both energy and resolve. He was endowed with robust health, and his energy, until drained by years of overwork, seemed inexhaustible. In his early career he seemed to accomplish enough for two or three men, teaching school and taking part in town politics and cultural activities. As editor of the Dictionary, he maintained for 36 years an inhumanly grueling pace that his colleagues and assistants could not match. Murray produced an average of 224 pages of copy a year; Bradley, 155; Craigie, 109; and Onions (working only part-time), 1. In the end, half the entries were from Murray’shand.
Murray also had a stubborn will to finish properly anything he undertook. His determination showed up early on the hikes he loved to take through the hills. Companions might be ready to turn back short of a summit, but never Murray. Once, on a trip to France, he set out to climb a mountain and was caught in an unseasonable snowstorm. He persevered to the top, returning to the village nearly frozen, his beard a great icicle. As a lexicographer, he insisted on careful, thorough work, and battled with budget-conscious Press men, well-meaning advisors who counseled compromise, and the mountains of complex and elusive data that had to be collected, organized, digested, and instructively set forth. Murray persevered and the Oxford English Dictionary was finished.
Murray also had a strong sense of duty, even of divine calling to his task. He was the descendant of Scottish Covenanters and throughout his life found his faith in God a supporting and driving force.
To make a general dictionary, one needs to have a broad general knowledge. Murray did. From childhood, he had an insatiable curiosity about the world of nature and of man. He delved into the sciences, especially geology; languages; and archaeology — he was a founding member and secretary of the Hawick Archaeological Society. As teacher in a one-room school, he increased his mastery of many subjects and studied languages on his way to work each day. A summer course in phonetics in Edinburgh under Alexander Melville Bell led incidentally to his giving Alexander Graham Bell, his teacher’s son, his first lesson in electricity. Murray’s spare time as a bank clerk was spent studying British dialects and Anglo-Saxon. With this background and his lifelong habit of reading, Murray wrote the dictionary entries for all subject fields himself. He wrote many inquiries to specialists but did not always learn much. When he took up the word aphis, first used by Linnaeus, he wrote to the Linnaean Society to ask its origin. The query was referred to a specialist in the species, who consulted a Greek scholar. The scholar, when his lexicon failed him, begged a friend who knew Murray to write for the etymology — a full circle.
I found reading the work a thoroughly enjoyable experience, perhaps the more for having myself worked on several dictionaries. In my notes, there are no criticisms and only one desideratum: a map showing the places mentioned in the first chapter, on Murray’s growing up in the Border country. I can only thank the author for her labors and commend the book to readers.
[Edward Gates, Indiana State University]
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Remarkable Names of Real People: Or How To Name Your Baby
Comp. and ann. by John Train, illustr. by Pierre Le-Tau, intr. by S.J. Perelman, (Clarkson N. Potter, 1977), 64 pp.
Name-dropping, like other kinds of droppings, comes in assorted shape, size, and coloring that defies description. Incongruous combinations like Halloween Buggage, Siddhartha Greenblatt, Silence Bellows, and Warren Peace appear, cheek by jowl, beside naughty connotations like Supply Clapp Thwing, Miss Pensive Cocke, and Ophelia Legg, and humorous conglomerations like Mary Louise Pantzaroff, Lettice Goedebed, and the Katz Pajama Company. No one would have had the gall to have concocted these names; indeed, they are all real, if you can believe the author, who has found an archbishop in Manila named Cardinal Sin. The collection is certainly worth at least a T. Hee (restaurant employee, New York City).
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Dictionary Buying Guide: A Consumer Guide to General English-Language Wordbooks in Print
Kenneth F. Kister, (R.R. Bowker Company, 1977), xx + 358 pp.
Unfortunately for the publisher, the designer of the cover of this book was carried away — but not far enough — in a feeble attempt to show dictionary, buying, and guide syllabified and pronounced in a style that is clearly an imitation (though just as clearly an inaccurate imitation) of the Merriam-Webster system. Book designers should keep their tiny fingers away from matters about which they know nothing: it proves embarrassing for authors, editors, and publishers.
I assume it must be some shortcoming of mine, but I do not know who Kenneth Kister is or what qualifications he may have to review dictionaries. Tactfully he assumes ultimate responsibility for the opinions and data in the book, then abruptly lists sources and consultants from whom “critical input derived.” I can only assume, from their paper qualifications, that the five consultants and three-member Advisory Board know their fields. What bothers me greatly is that none of them is either a linguist or a lexicographer. Most are librarians. Librarians do not, necessarily, know anything about lexicography, though one could scarcely dispute their knowing something about dictionaries.
What may be the basic fault with the entire approach is that dictionaries ought to be reviewed by lexicographers who have training in all those aspects of linguistics that apply to lexicography. Kister’s background and qualifications as a librarian are unassailable, and he does not pretend knowing very much about etymology, pronunciation, or the quality of the definitions in the dictionaries under review. He does, however, lay himself open to criticism in using a word list (of his own devising, apparently) by which he measures the adequacy of certain dictionaries. Since publishers will look to the Guide for his comments, one may be confident that future editions of their dictionaries will contain the words on Kister’s list. He will have to come up with a new one for each new edition of the Guide.
Kister’s introduction, “A word about Dictionaries,” is generally very good. He points up the ambiguity in the application of the epithet unabridged, though I know of no “lexicographers [who] are unable to agree on a firm definition of the term.” The fact is that lexicographers usually have little to do with the titling and subtitling of the dictionaries they prepare; such decisions are most often made by the publishers’ sales departments. I believe that the fact of the matter is that the general public superficially takes unabridged to mean ‘containing all of the words in the language,’ while publishers, aware of the weight that the word carries in a title, rationalize their use of it by resorting to the literal sense, ‘not abridged [from a larger dictionary].’ I contend that people’s acceptance of the first sense as “superficial” can be easily demonstrated by a few simple questions, the answers to which at once reveal that people really are aware of the fact that there is no dictionary yet published (or, indeed, publishable) that could contain all of the words of English. Of classical Latin or Greek, yes; of English or, for that matter, of any living language, no.
One of the standard criteria for judging dictionaries, as given in the Guide, is “authority.” Kister points out that “People, not machines, make dictionaries,” and he writes, also quite properly, that the staff and consultants who prepared the book should be listed in the front matter. But then he launches a series of comments about the reputability of editors, publishers, and others which appear to suggest that unless an editor is listed in Who’s Who in America, American Men of Science, and the Directory of American Scholars, or, if a publisher, in Literary Market Place, then the quality of the work is likely to be suspect. This is patent nonsense: reputable editors and reputable publishers have turned out rubbish or, at least, works of questionable quality. Likewise, editors and publishers who have never done a dictionary before have turned out gems of lexicography. To mention two cases, Partridge, who certainly has a good reputation, compiled Origins, which is riddled with errors and misconceptions; contrariwise, Robyn Supraner, whom I’ve never heard of, was the “author” of the Troll Talking Picture Dictionary, which Kister reviews very favorably. Kister classifies dictionaries more or less as follows:
unabridged: 250,000 or more entries
semi-unabridged: 130,000-250,000 entries
abridged: 55,000-130,000 entries
pocket: under 55,000 entries
school: 25,000-95,000 entries
children’s: 500-5,000 entries
I believe that if he had discussed these classifications with dictionary people, Kister would have found general agreement in the trade that the names are somewhat different, to wit:
unabridged: 250,000 or more entries
college or desk: 130,000-250,000 entries
concise: 60,000-100,000 entriesDepending on the level for which the dictionary was prepared: up to 90,000 for high school; down to 10,000 for elementary school.
children’s: as Kister says, this ranges all over the place; however, his narrow limits preclude the Macmillan Dictionary for Children, which contains 12,000.
I have never heard anyone refer to the classifications “semi-unabridged” and “abridged” in my 25 years in lexicography. Kister writes “Abridged dictionaries are sometimes referred to as ‘concise’ or ‘desk’ dictionaries.” I think that “desk” refers usually to what I have called college dictionaries.
The next section of the introduction, “Inside the Dictionary,” gives a concise, clear description of what one is likely to find and the customary arrangement of information.
Under “Dictionary Trends,” Kister traces, ever so succinctly, the history of dictionaries from Cawdrey (1604) to modern times. The description is straightforward, fair, and interesting to read. I take exception only to the remarks describing semantic and word frequency counts as a “refinement”: the fact of the matter is that language occurs in such incredible profusion that there has never been a count that has proved either statistically accurate or that has included data of any value about words (or forms) beyond the 20,000 most common. True, the task would be prodigious, even if the fastest computers were to be used. Nonetheless, the corpus of material to be examined is so vast that it is unlikely that any researcher will ever find the funds to undertake a systematic procedure for the enumeration, listing, and analysis of even a large percentage of the words in English. Kister’s assumption that the 155,000 entries in The American Heritage Dictionary were drawn from a one-million-word computerized sample is naive.
Kister correctly states that computers are used during the preparation of dictionaries to perform “such routine mechanical chores as sorting and alphabetizing.” But he is mistaken when he writes that “The Random House Dictionary instructed one of its computers to organize its word stock into 158 subject areas.” Disregarding anthropomorphism, such a feat was impossible in the early 1960s, when the RHD was compiled, because it would have required computers (or programs) capable of “reading” definitions or words and of determining whether they belonged in chemistry, botany, archaeology, or what-have-you. Computers almost 20 years later are still incapable of such evaluative insights, chiefly because of ambiguities in the language.
Another slip by the author reveals that computers are “beginning to play an active role in the dictionary…printing process.” I may be fussy, but I consider typesetting (or composition, if you prefer) to be a function quite separate from printing, and I am sure Kister meant “typesetting.” “Beginning” may be a bit modest: for almost eight years, a company I know in England has been using computers to typeset dictionaries and other reference books at the rate of almost ten million words a year. (Computers have also proved useful, in the compilation of reference books generally, in such functions as automatic index extraction, automatic cross-reference checking, etc. In addition, once the text of a dictionary is in a computer’s memory, it can be extracted and sorted in many different ways to reveal useful information about the language for lexicographers.)
Following the main introductory information is a section called “Choosing the Right Dictionary,” which contains much that is useful. It also contains some implications that are distorted. For example:
Note also that entry statistics can be calculated in a variety of ways. Some publishers may count only main entries, whereas others include main entries, inflected forms, run-ons, and variants in the count. [p. 20]
Had Kister taken the trouble to read the Federal Specification G-D-331D for Dictionaries, English; June 28, 1974, to which he alludes on page 18, he would have known that in America “entry counts” for dictionaries include not only main entries, inflected forms, run-ons, and variants, but also part-of-speech changes, list words (usually found at re-, un-, over-, super-, etc.), and similar data. (On the other hand, British publishers usually count only headwords—but they are learning !) The result is that a book like The American College Dictionary, which is advertised as containing 132,000 entries, lists only a little over 74,000 headwords (by actual count). His quoting the comments of David Guralnik, editor of Webster’s New World Dictionary, to the effect, “dictionaries…contain definitions for only a fraction of the total vocabulary entries to which they lay claim,” displays Kister’s naive acceptance of Guralnik’s little piece of propaganda, for, as it turns out, WNWD is almost the only dictionary of its size that wastes valuable space in treating words like predetermination (normally run-on under predetermine), masculinity (normally run-on under masculine), and flavorfully (normally run-on under flavorful) as headwords, notwithstanding the practice of other lexicographers to regard them as having self-evident meanings. Does anyone who knows English well enough to use a dictionary need a definition of flatterer?
Although Kister’s criticism of counting undefined, listed words with self-evident prefixes like un- and non- is well taken, since publishers tend to overdo such lists, the fact remains that he has omitted from consideration what research has determined is the main use of dictionaries, namely, to find out how a word is spelt.
An unfortunate typographical (I hope!) error appears on page 22: “nounce” should read “nonce.”
I am well aware of the opinions held by many that biographical and geographical entries are considered to be “encyclopedic” and therefore carry some sort of stigma that ought to make them ineligible for inclusion in a dictionary, but I continue to maintain that if, as linguists have long held, language is essentially spoken, not written, it is impossible to “hear” a capital letter; also, if the criterion of frequency is applied, there can be no argument confuting the fact that New York and Lincoln crop up far more often that triskaidekaphobia and mitochondrion.
Turning to the review of Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary, my only comment is that the introduction to the dictionary apparently omits the information that it is based largely on the Annandale Edition of Ogilvie’s Imperial Dictionary, which, in turn, was based on the (much smaller) 1828 edition of Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language.
I must take issue with the oft-expressed criticism of Webster’s Third New International, repeated here by Kister, that “W3 strikes a much less prescriptive stance” in comparison with W2 with regard to restrictive usage labels. In the first place, the labels in any dictionary are neither “restrictive” nor “prescriptive” nor is a lack of them to be construed as “permissive.” If any criticism is to be leveled at W3 for its failure to label many senses and words it is that its editors were not descriptive enough. In his assessment of the RHD, Kister quotes from the preface, “Since language is a social institution, the lexicographer must give the user an adequate indication of the attitudes of society toward particular words or expressions.” These words reflect essentially my opinion. If one understands them and agrees with them, then he can hardly call W3 a “descriptive” or “permissive” dictionary or characterize labels in dictionaries “restrictive.” If anything, W3 isn’t sufficiently descriptive or, at least, not accurately so in keeping with the way people feel about the usage levels of the words and senses the editors chose to leave unlabeled.
Kister refers to W3’s spelling of proper names and adjectives with small letters (brooklyn) as an “oddity.” I refer to it as an error, as a distortion of the facts.
Kister’s favorable opinion of the “clean, compressed look of the page layout” will find many who disagree: I, for one, find the typography execrable. Examination of the double-page spread where take is to be found makes the type moiré before the eyes. It did not occur to Kister to notice that all entries in the RHD that exceed half a column in length are double-leaded to improve legibility.
The review of The American Heritage Dictionary I found to be fair and accurate. One interesting factor that influenced the AHD’s format (double-column page with a narrower foredge column devoted to illustrations), which the reviewer may not know of, was the use of automatic typsetting: it is extremely difficult (and expensive) to program a computer to set run-arounds (the insertion of an illustration into a block of text so that the text is run around it). AHD solved the problem by running the text in solid columns, with the illustrations in their own column. Neat trick.
The author is mistaken — though how he could possibly have learned the facts, I cannot image—in his description of Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of the English Language (International Edition) as “an entirely new work.” In fact, it was a rewritten version of F&W’s old “Emphatype Edition,” an abortive attempt at lexicography that tried to present the pronunciation of each headword with stress marks only—that is, without using phonetic respelling—an impossible dream for a language like English. The staff, with a couple of exceptions, was amateur. I know a fair bit about the project because I was the pronunciation editor. I know, too, that with rare exceptions, the language experts who lent their names to the front matter were seldom consulted (except over an occasional luncheon).
The preceding is supposed to serve as a discussion of some matters pertaining to specific reference works on which I have inside information, not as a serious, adverse criticism of Kenneth Kister’s treatment of information he could not possibly have had at hand. A few disagreements with his evaluations are inevitable: to coin a phrase, that’s what makes book publishing. The rest of the Dictionary Buying Guide concerns itself with a long section (pp. 194-315) on “Special-purpose Dictionaries and Wordbooks,” which is broken down to cover books on Etymology, Usage, Style, Slang and Dialect, Synonyms, Crossword Puzzles, Rhymes, Spelling, Pronunciation, Abbreviations, Signs and Symbols, Foreign Words and Phrases, etc. The reviews of these books, like those of the dictionaries in the first 194 pages, are informative, well-thought-out, and of a length appropriate to their importance. Appendices list recently discontinued dictionaries, additional sources for evaluations, general-interest books on language, and a directory of U.S. publishers and distributors. A thorough index completes the volume.
In sum, the Dictionary Buying Guide is indispensable for any library that serves people interested in language reference books, chiefly dictionaries. It is far superior to any descriptive bibliography that I know of, both for its completeness and its frankness. Kister’s criteria are not always mine, and they may not be yours, either, but they are uniformly and fairly applied, and the publishers of the books reviewed should look to their dictionaries if they came under adverse criticism: the Dictionary Buying Guide is bound to be an influential factor in their future sales.
— Laurence Urdang
EPISTOLA {D. Martin Jenni}
I would pick a tiny nit with contributor Revard, who in his delightful piece on the ciphered hankypanky in Harley 3362 construes gxddbov (fuccant) as a participle which forms (with sunt, I gather) a sort of progressive present. Such a construction is rather unlikely in a fifteenth-century English text and is moreover unnecessary in view of the splendidly vigorous 1. p. pl. pres. ind. verb (from ‘fucco, fuccare') encoded there. Like its native model, it is a straightforward active verb, in contrast to the Romans’ tendency to cast such activities as deponents—e.g. futari. (There is a deponent parallel in English, though: it is, in the Harley cipher, ‘vp hfv mbke’.)
[D. Martin Jenni, Iowa City, Iowa]
EPISTOLA {H.J. Hamilton}
For the information of William J. Cleere, the All-American named Wonder Monds is alive and well and playing in the Canadian Football League as a member of the Ottawa Rough Riders. Up here he is known as Wonderful Monds.
[H.J. Hamilton, Kingston, Ontario]
A Note and a Query
Bruce B. Olive and Carter Revard, Washington University
Among words that are likely to be included in dictionaries before long is humongous (pronounced [hjumenges], with accent on second syllable). It has been in consistent popular use in speech since the early 1950s, and it is now known to nearly every student we have spoken with from all over the United States, all of whom use it in the same way, as an adjective meaning larger than life, awesome, overwhelming, enormous. It is more vivid and forceful than the conventional synonyms like tremendous or huge. Students asked to offer “etymologies” for it say it probably is composed of huge and monstrous—in other words, it is like chortle or galumph, Lewis Carroll “portmanteaus.”
Perhaps the most interesting question about the word is how it has spread so far and so fast without appearing, so far as we know, very often in print. It seems to be known all over the country, judging from students in classes at Washington University, St. Louis, who come from such exotic places as Philadelphia, California, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Chicago, and St. Louis. And the oldest known persons who claim to have used it in their high school days are in their middle 30s, suggesting that it originated, perhaps, in the early 1950s. (These persons, Elbert and Marion Hill, now living in Southeast Oklahoma, were met by one of the present authors— Revard—during a trip to Las Vegas. Discovering that they knew the word in their youth was some compensation for his having lost the humongous sum of forty cents in the slot machines.)
As it happens, however, we have now found humongous in print. Olive, being a pilot, occasionally reads Flying magazine; he turned up the following sentence in its June 1975 issue, in an article by Richard L. Collins entitled “Pilot Report: 112A” (p. 48, col. 2, line 10):
The metal doors were incorporated on existing airplanes, at no cost to the customer but at humongous cost to Rockwell.
The italics, of course, are added. It is clear that Collins meant his humongous to convey just what the students' use of it does; we may be certain that Rockwell shelled out tremendous sums to get that door incorporated!
Another sighting of humongous, albeit slightly misspelled, in People Magazine, December 5, 1977, on page 118, center column, next to the last line: “…smirking, humunguous giant clams.” We should at least be able to settle on a spelling.
Can any readers of VERBATIM offer earlier examples of this word in print or in speech? Does anyone know whether the word began in the slang or argot of a particular group, or in a particular region? Does anyone have a good idea of how it has spread and flourished so remarkably? (We suspect disc jockeys; perhaps it is on TV now, but no one among those we have talked to seems to have noticed it there. Is it abroad yet in England?
ADDENDUM: In most U.S. cities, there now are policemen or announcers providing traffic reports on certain radio stations from helicopters patrolling over the main streets and throughways. In St. Louis, one such policeman has invented (apparently) a term for the traffic-jam caused by drivers slowing down to gawk at an accident or incident: gaper-block. Is this term in use anywhere else? If the policeman (Don Miller) did not get it elsewhere, it will be interesting to see whether it spreads. It may well be that the term trafficjam began in a particular city, invented by a particular person. But most words or idioms, though presumably beginning with individuals, seem never to be traceable; no one has ever been able to catch a turn of speech at its source, though everyone seems to pick up such turns quickly and it is always appreciated as a humorous way of filling a newly felt need in the language.
EPISTOLA {Alexandra Urdang}
Though I agree with the basic point of Francis Griffith’s article, “Humpty Dumpty’s World” [IV, 4], some of his examples are contrived. That gay has taken on the connotation glum is not apparent to this reader. Granted, one thinks of homosexuality before ‘innocent joy’ when the word gay appears, but many people do not think of people who are necessarily ‘humorless’ or ‘tense’ when they read about Gay Liberation, for example. They think of equal rights for people who are discriminated against because of sexual preference(s).
Does Mr. Griffith believe that “Gay Liberation” means ‘humorless’ or ‘liberated from gaiety’? Gay will not mean ‘glum’ until Anita Bryant becomes a lexicographer. One of the things that makes language exciting is that it reflects the social climate through new words and through the new connotations and denotations taken on by existing words. Often, a new connotation carries with it the opinion of the person who coined it.
“Many of today’s reversals are deliberately contrived,” as the article states; but some that appear on the surface to be opposites may, under scrutiny, reveal a logical progression. Bad for good is understandable if one thinks of the expression, “It’s so good it hurts!” Or, perhaps, it is derived from reviews of modern art where some things are so bad that they are considered good.
In any case, why should Mr. Griffith assume the gay is a bad scene?
[Alexandra Urdang, Essex, Connecticut]
EPISTOLA {Jack Shreve}
I think it is ludicrous to lament the reversal of meaning demonstrated by the modern usage of gay. It may be true that some bar-hopping homosexuals observed by Francis Griffith are joyless souls, but why should we judge the result of an organic linguistic process? We don’t bother to lament that silly once meant ‘blessed,’ that nice originally meant ‘stupid,’ or that unvillainous villa gave rise to villain. Moreover, the reversal in this case is not modern; gay has been indicative of sexual looseness since the seventeenth century.
When I was in graduate school, I was indoctrinated that the task of modern linguistics is to describe and not to prescribe. So why prescribe for the word a reversion to its pristine meaning?
But cheer up! It could be worse. The Spanish word for homosexual (marica) comes from the name of the Virgin Mary (Maria).
[Jack Shreve, Cumberland, Maryland]
Shocking News from the West
Vera L. Harding, Oregon State University
While most of the population of the world today is getting used to “shocks” of all kinds— “future,” therapeutical, and those resulting from “that” discovery about your son, mother, neighbor, president, etc. — as being part of life itself, those of us who come into contact with foreign cultures experience, in addition, the so-called “cultural shock” —and cause it in equal amounts. Not only does the spoken language lose in translation—so does body language. As many of us have witnessed, the “o.k.” sign made famous by American movies causes uncontrolled laughter in theaters of those countries where it is an obscene gesture.
The dangerous thing about cultural shock is that sometimes only the “shockee” notices it, with the “shocker” going happily on his way to the next episode. Often it takes many years of adaptation in a foreign country for us to realize that in the beginning we sometimes left people speechless. This realization often occurs when we start experiencing shocks caused by our own compatriots who are recent arrivals in the new culture.
I feel entitled to talk about the shock-exchange between North Americans and South Americans because I have been part of it. A native of Brazil, I received a year’s study grant in Oregon during my college days. Later on I returned to America and, as a language teacher, was thrown into regular contact with foreign students here and with Americans returning from their studies abroad.
Most of the shocks I am aware of having caused have to do with the unfortunate use of words. Sometimes I enjoy thinking back on an incident for which I had no explanation at the time it happened. I am still trying to figure out why it happened. The culprit is always that same linguistic gap. Like the day I went to the dentist and described my problems: “I have a sensible tooth.” Sensible in Spanish, French and other languages means ‘sensitive,’ why not so in English? The good doctor went straight to examine my wisdom teeth, those, of course, most inclined to be sensible. And he announced proudly that I had not one, but four.
More recently I met a gentleman whose elegant way of moving his arms when he walks caught my attention. Meaning to serve a compliment, I said, “You know what I like about you? Your gait.” I must have pronounced your more like you’re, because his answer at first puzzled me: “Some people think I am because of the way I walk, but I’m not.” And that was the end of that. Which reminds me of a French girl, a friend of mine, who many years ago was here under the auspices of some ladies' church group. On being interviewed on the stage by the Christian matrons, she was asked what she thought of American boys. “Well, they are good and bad” was her answer. But somehow the ladies' response (they ended the interview right then) led her to believe years later that they actually must have understood her to say, “Well, they are good in bed.”
I always warn my students to beware of false cognates. One of them has told me that she had a hard time last year in Costa Rica when she was visiting friends of the family with whom she was living. Just before sitting down for a big meal she asked to be shown where the baño was, whereupon she was immediately escorted to a cubicle with only a shower in it by a puzzled maid who handed her an enormous bath towel. She never did find out where the more important facilities were located in that house.
I still laugh with my American friend who tried to get through customs in San Salvador in a friendly mood although he was exhausted. When asked if he was casado ‘married’ he understood cansado ‘tired,’ and gave the employee a “more or less” sign with his hand.
Certain words lose in translation even between sister languages like Spanish and Portuguese. My Portuguese classes have generally attracted students who are fluent in Spanish. Once during our conversation practice a girl intended to say to the class that she had eaten for a while in the school cafeteria but hadn’t liked it. What she actually said was that she had eaten a mouse there but hadn’t liked it. She had resorted to her Spanish vocabulary where rato means ‘a while,’ whereas in Portuguese it means ‘mouse.’
On many occasions I have been called to help American families here who need to have a letter translated from Spanish or Portuguese. Their son or daughter is studying south of the border, or they have Latin students staying with them and want to communicate with the young person’s parents. The letters that come always end with lots of hugs and embraces from total strangers, but I doubt that any good American would be offended by that. (I always translate the hugs as “best regards,” just in case.) One of the letters, sent by the Argentine “parents” of this Oregon boy, complained that he insisted on making his bed every day. Likewise, American families who have welcomed Latin boys to their homes are often horrified to see that they never make theirs. If those Latin boys had been made aware in advance by a kind soul that here in the U.S. everybody does his share of the housework, and if Americans understood that a “well-bred” Latin macho wouldn’t dream of making a bed, things wouldn’t be so bed, excuse me, bad.
Another family here was indignant that the Brazilian “parents” of their 17-year-old daughter wouldn’t allow her to date without “dragging” along her 14-year-old “sister.” They wanted me to translate a letter explaining to the parents there that the (real) parents here trusted the girl. Difficult situation. Small-town Brazilians would fear that, if they yielded, their 14-year-old (real) daughter might some day want to date alone too. Or the American girl herself might feel indignant at the lack of respect local boys would show for her if she became “emancipated.” All kinds of extremely disagreeable incidents could originate from that.
Fortunately, cases like these are exceptions. The bulk of cultural shocks are mild, and many are hilarious. They contribute to a lively, fun-filled existence, if you have a sense of humor. (A temperamental foreigner is anathema in any language.) But after 16 years of residence I do wish someone in this country had told me before that the pitted olives required for a certain meatball recipe are not supposed to have pits in them. I wouldn’t have had that “sensible” tooth in the first place.
SIC! SIC! SIC!
New candidate for most frequently misspelled word (after misspelled): genealogy, which often appears as “geneology.” Candidate for word often misused: discomfit, confused with discomfort. [Janet W. Salz, Lauderhill, Florida]
If It Isn’t In Writing…
Geoffrey Bocca, New York, New York
As a frequent visitor to the United States I am always intrigued and sometimes bemused by the American compulsion to put everything in writing. Take the notice that until recently decorated the door of all New York Post Offices, “No Dogs Allowed”, and underneath, the somewhat apologetic amendment, “Except Seeing-Eye Dogs.” To begin with, why should dogs be barred from post offices at all? A post office offers perhaps less temptation for a pup to blot its copybook than any other establishment except perhaps an income tax office. It is not like a fruit store or a grocery or even an aromatic pharmacy. Secondly, neither the seeing-eye dog nor its master is likely to read the fine print and it is inconceivable that even the most sadistic postmaster would eject a blind man and his dog from his fief.
It often seems to me that the first thought of the American bureaucrat, given any situation whatever, is to rush to the printer and draw up a miniature constitution. Every restaurant displays a prominent notice, “Occupancy by more then X people is dangerous and unlawful.” How long is it, I wonder, since a law enforcement officer (policeman) came to count heads? (“Am I on the vice beat today, lootenant?” “No, O’Reilly, you are on the restaurant head-check squad. Shoot foist and count afterwards.”)
In many restaurant toilets I see a sign, “Employees must wash their hands before leaving.” It seems to me that this slightly unsavory instruction would be more effective as a word by the restaurateur into the ear of a new employee, or at least hung in the kitchens. But in New York at least, it must not only be done. It must be read to be done. (Its double redundancy lies in the unlikelihood of their washing their hands after leaving.)
Almost alone among civilized countries, the United States demands a visitor to make his customs declaration in writing. Other countries don’t bother. The United States asks one’s name (with middle initial, something most western Europeans drop the moment they can hold a pen), flight number, address in the United States. After one has filled in all this, one is told—in writing—“The Customs Inspector may permit you to make an oral declaration.” In other words you can say it, but you have to write it first.
In the cloakroom of the Yale Club in New York is a sign saying, “Members are not allowed to leave their possessions in the cloakroom for more than 36 hours.” Why not? Or why 36 hours? Why not 24 hours? Or 48 hours? After 36 hours does some dread metamorphosis happen to the Yalie’s coonskin coat? Why say anything at all?
The sandlot in Washington Square has a sign “Sandlot reserved for children and their guardians.” This presumably is aimed at Greenwich Village artists, writers, and lawyers who are notorious for pushing children off any sandlot and playing in it themselves.
And when the sign is in fact reasonable and necessary, no American signwriter would dream of leaving the matter as it is. Take, “No littering, smoking, or spitting.” Until recently, on New York buses and subways it read:
“New York City Health Code PROHIBITS (on all New York City transportation facilities), LITTERING (or creating a nuisance or an insanitary condition), SMOKING (or carrying an open flame, lighted match, cigarette, cigar or pipe), SPITTING (Penalty, fine, or imprisonment or both). Order of the New York Transportation Authority.”
Instructions in taxis must be something of a cottage industry in New York, and they give the rider a good read for quite long distances. One sign says “Pay Here.” Another says, “The law: Alight on curb side only.” Another says, “Dear Taxi-rider, you will appreciate that for security reasons the drivers are not obliged to change more than $5.” On the driver’s dashboard one may read his name, the date of expiry of his license, and occasionally such esoteric items of information as “must wear glasses while driving.” (“Excuse me driver, far be it from me to dent your machismo, but I notice you are driving without your glasses.”) Recently I collected a new one, —a beauty. “Please keep both feet on the ground.” (“Listen; bub, uncross your legs or get the hell out of my cab!”)
This American compulsion for putting everything in writing clearly stems from the birth of the Republic when the Founding Fathers, against all British precedent, insisted on a written constitution. The British still don’t have one.
In fact signs and written instructions tend to invite derision in Britain. During the war, the windows of London tube trains were covered with a cloth mesh as a protection against splintering from air raids. A well-remembered Government-sponsored cartoon drawn by Fougasse and displayed on all trains showed an irresponsible fellow tearing the mesh away. The civic-minded citizen—“Billy Brown of London Town”—admonishes him: “I trust you’ll pardon my correction. That stuff is there for your protection.” Leading to the famous riposte, “I thank you for that information, but I cannot see the bloody station.”
The only English example that comes immediately to mind is “Please adjust your dress before leaving” in public lavatories. Perhaps because of its elegance it has become part of England’s heritage of scatalogical humor. Churchill allegedly quoted it as the only cliché which a certain Foreign Secretary left out in one of his speeches, though Churchill denied having said it.
That Americans do not read signs or are even aware of them is as interesting as the phenomenon itself. American eyes are as immune to signs as Russian ears are immune to propaganda slogans booming from loudspeakers. Americans traveling with sheathed ballpoints throughout Europe never question the necessity of the customs forms they have to fill on arrival in the United States. When I bring the subject up with American friends, they either look blank or indignantly deny the entire thesis. “You English are worse” one friend foamed. “What about ‘Please adjust your dress before leaving’…and …and…and…Anyway, you are worse.”
I returned to London from New York some time ago and spent a night in the Portobello Hotel in Notting Hill Gate. A sign in the elevator said, “Please close both gates.” But, signpunchy from America I did not read that at all. I read, or seemed to read, “Dear Hotel Guest, For the comfort and convenience of other guests you are respectfully requested when entering or leaving the lift, to assure that both gates are fully closed, as otherwise the lift is rendered inoperative, to the inconvenience of those guests seeking to avail themselves of it. We thank you for your courtesy and co-operation. The Management.” The irony is that an old English room-clerk might well say something like that while his American counterpart giving the same instructions orally is more likely to say, “Close dem gates, paisan.”
Then, returning to New York, I received an unexpected shock. The New York City Transit Authority has scrapped its grandiose warnings. The subway trains now state merely, “No littering, spitting or smoking.” Who is going to take any notice of that!
Happily I was quickly reassured that the post offices at least have retained respect for the written word, which, of course, is as it should be. The post office on West 52nd Street, in addition to barring dogs (except seeing-eye dogs), now bars, “baby carriages, shopping carts, hand trucks, etc.” Etc.? Etc.?
And the Postmaster on West 83rd Street near Columbus Avenue has spotted a fatal flaw in the dog warning. Reader, have you spotted it? Reading as it does, it opens the post office to an invasion of cats, pet rabbits, parrots, budgerigars, hamsters, and shoulderloads of monkeys. The loophole has now been closed. Since my last visit, a new sign has been added to the dog sign. It says: “No pets allowed.”
Lest the reader think that such rules are confined to New York and London, he may be consoled by the universality (or encroachment) of the practice elsewhere: a notice on every entrance into the Miami Airport reads, “No DOGS Or Other Animals Permitted in this Establishment. Except ‘Dog Guide’ in accordance with Section 413.08 Florida Statutes.” I think the time has come to sign off.
EPISTOLA {Earl Baldwin of Bewdley}
Like Mr. Gumfudgin [IV, 1], our family has been collecting “ormonyms” (alias “junctures”) for quite some time. May I offer a few examples from real life?
At a time when our Eastern counties had been ravaged by floods, we were intrigued to learn from the radio that the authorities were strengthening the cedar fences all along the coastline: a measure whose efficacy we could be forgiven for doubting. Not long afterwards we had a power blackout in our area. It was evidently a case of sheer carelessness, for we were told when we telephoned the electricity people that a bird had flown into the inattention wires at the local substation. Our technical knowledge was only just adequate to unravel this particular mystery.
Of course we quickly saw through these bland official statements. Not so an aunt of mine, who was genuinely enraged to hear on the radio that a squad of ‘seeker-debts’ was abroad in the land. She had visions of a knock on the door in the small hours, with the request to present her financial files for immediate inspection. Only when it became clear that this suspicious crew spent most of their time at work on a sailing ship did the poor lady put two and two together and regain her composure.
I was once told that we had been asked to dine locally with a Mrs. Great Sheep, a neighbour of whom I could not remember ever having heard. It came as a disappointment to discover that her name was in fact Gray-Cheape.
In his letters to me over the years my father would often write: “It is a Grade A today,” when he meant that there was a total absence of sunshine.
Nudist coveries were things we always looked forward to, even if they may not entirely satisfy Mr. Gumfudgin’s definition. They were almost always made by that gallant pioneer Major Breakthrough, who may not be quite the cliché to you that he is on our side of the Atlantic. There is no one to equal him in Britain today for keeping abreast of nuder velopment.
[Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, Hemel Hempstead, Herts.]
EPISTOLA {C. R. Cavonius}
I’m amazed that no Scot has taken you to task over the tedious list of Murphy’s Law and its promiscuous derivatives. Murphy’s Law is surely a plagiarism of Macpherson’s Principle: the toast always falls buttered side doon. (Partridge might well have glossed this by observing that Murphy’s Law first appeared after WW II, whereas Macpherson’s Principle was known as far south as Cambridge by the mid-30s, as it forms the basis of Clark-Thrimble’s classic experiment in resistentialism.)
Your Menu Barbarisms [III,3], remind me of a Yugoslavian restaurant in Passau, where the menu had been translated into German and English. Several dishes were served ‘mit Beilagen,’ which came across as (e.g.): ‘Cutlet with Enclosures.’ I didn’t have the heart to try a speciality called ‘Lustiger Bosnier,’ or ‘Gay Bosnian.’
[C. R. Cavonius, Institut für Arbeitsphysiologie an der Universität Dortmund]
Off Base
Barbara R. DuBois, Los Alamos, New Mexico
“Dangling participle” usually calls to mind an -ing form like dangling, but the dangler that is faddish now is an -ed participle: based. Perhaps it’s going the way of due to, which many arbiters have accepted as equal to because, though it once was considered equal to the participle owed to or owing to.
The objectionable based is used with on: “Based on an annual prediction of one million carburetors, the engineers state that the valve has solved the problem at no increase in cost” says that the engineers are based on a prediction. Speakers and writers in the automotive industry like vague unsubstantiatable claims, of course. “Based on the highway estimates, the new cars will be more efficient” has the cars based on estimates. Maybe so, but don’t you wish they were based on strong wheel bases instead? “Based on the income we expect, eight cents per gallon is impossible.” Can that be construed, or does it remind you of Orwell’s claim that fuzzy writing indicates fuzzy thinking?
The business world as a whole has adopted the phrase. “Based on your qualifications, there is no vacancy at present.” Vacancy based on qualifications? What is based? Usually a judgment. But the sentence becomes ugly if based on is forced to behave: “Based on your qualifications, my judgment is that there is no vacancy for you.” Let’s simply discard it: “There is no vacancy for an applicant with your qualifications.” Another business example: “Based on his record of achievements, we determined whether to hire him.” Here a determination might be safely based, but who knows, with that whether holding fire? How about “His record helped us decide”? Based on complicates constructions unnecessarily. One personnel executive maintains, “We can only know how people appear, not how they really are, based on the observer’s ability to understand.” What is based? Knowledge? Our knowledge of people is based on our ability to read character from appearance? I tried my version on him, but based on his vague nod, I doubt that he knew whether that was his meaning—or what was his meaning. An entire executive conference thought that they shouldn’t promote the employee based on one week’s improvement. Here the correction is easy: they might base promotion on improvement.
Outside the quiet office, other business examples appear: “Based on the rates we use, we can’t afford to discount.” This would be clearer with the relationship directly expressed: “Our rates are so low that we can’t afford to discount.” The management may “reject the bid, based on the disadvantages.” This one is a candidate for because substitution: “reject the bid because of the disadvantages.”
Speaking of candidates, they pluck based on out of the air regularly: “He thinks we will win, based on his progress so far.” A simple from often helps: “From his progress so far, he thinks he will win.” Because will work, but even better is a direct expression of the causal connection: “His progress so far makes him think he will win.” But “Based on a survey, the electorate is aging” needs more help: from doesn’t work: “From a survey, the electorate is aging” or, worse, “The electorate is aging, from a survey.” The safest correction is the straightforward “The survey finds that the electorate is aging.” And “The electors are elected based on plurality” may be hopeless, or we could try the simplest word, by: “An elector wins by plurality”? Sometimes based on can be direct if we change an adjective to a noun: instead of “He’s a popular man, based on his antiwar days,” write “His popularity is based on his antiwar activities.” Even groups have trouble: “Based on past statistics, the commission knows that the new program will work.” What is based? Not the commission. Again, from will do. Based on wide experience, politicians speak to all our problems, but I wish they would base action rather than speech on experience. Maybe our problem is dangling politicians. After all the speeches, the networks, based on projections, predict the winner. I guess a “prediction based on projection” is too poetic.
A rare thrill was our Secretary of State’s exact use: he announced a policy of openness based on full information. One other correct—well, almost—example turned up: “We want to change the economic system to one more based on merit.” But the more needs to be moved: “system based more on merit,” and what is it more than? You see how contagious and insidious based on is.
Though the sports world usually furnishes more examples of errors than I can use, I have only one here: “They should be back in the second half, based on their record.” But I’m listening carefully. If baseball announcers catch the infection…
A Metalinguistic Inquiry into F
Bruce D. Price, New York, N.Y.
One morning in the limbo between sleep and the so called real world (a time when alpha waves are said to spark), I had a curious epiphany. Which was that the letter F is distinguished by being the first letter of a great and disproportionate number of words for unpleasant objects or attributes. And, further, that there was something weak, dark and unmanly about the letter itself. My sleepy brain fumbled through my vocabulary seeking confirmation: fail, fickle, feeble, fop, fag, frail, fetid, famine, fiasco, flimsy…
Yes, there did seem to be some support for this odd insight. But now I was coming awake and my logical mind resisted the whole notion. Would you not confidently predict that each letter would have its equal share of appealing and unappealing words? What sense could there be in saying: No, F seems different from the others, it’s a weak and dark letter, somehow tainted, somehow unique…
So there you have my Dionysian vision. And the Apollonian response—humbug. How to resolve the matter?
I raced out of bed (for me, walking in the morning is racing, indeed) and plunged into my dictionary of synonyms (Roget’s variety) which, unlike a dictionary, lists only everyday words. I scanned the entries commencing with F. I assigned them all with quick justice to one of three categories —those that were neither good nor bad (field, farm, fog); those that were decisively positive (fame, favor, fortune, friend); and those that were clearly negative (failure, fatigue, fascism, fear, fiend, frivolous, flabby, flaw, foible, flighty, forfeit, fidget, fraud, feces, flatulence, felony, faded, etc.). And I tallied. And, behold, there were more than twice as many negative F-words as positive ones!2
So there, as far as I was judge of the matter, my somnolent insight was substantiated. And yet, now the puzzle had truly unfolded. What was there about F which should attract this constellation of frailties, flops, and foulnesses? What is F’s dark magic? My research, admittedly of the semi-demi-scientific sort, took me to odd rooms of the library and even odder recesses of the thoughts of friends and relations.
I soon learned that F is a fairly rare letter, heading up less than half of 1% of English words. Technically, F is an unvoiced labiodental fricative. My thoughts often returned to that first feature—unvoiced—as a crucial factor. F is not said in the same complete way that a B or V is.
I recalled that a child’s first experience with F is likely to be F for False and F for Failure. But which comes first—the concept or the letter? I attended a school which used the A-E system of grades. And I can still remember my confusion when F would sneak back into the picture. I asked a teacher once: “Why do we have two letters—E and F—for failure?” Obviously, F was not supposed to be used at all. It’s just that F seemed more appropriate for a bad grade than E.
And there’s Frankenstein, foul balls, female, the forbidding and confusing f-stops, and F-Troop, a TV series about a regiment of military fumblers. I tried—without success—to find the producer of that show to ask him: “Why F?” Why does F Troop more quickly suggest that the soldiers will be foolish and feeble-minded than C Troop or S Troop?
And there are the eight (or so) notorious Anglo-Saxon words of four letters. F initials two (25%!).
And what, I wonder, would Rimbaud, so visionary about vowels, have to say about F?
Jewish mystics, I read, have no trouble with the notion that a letter possesses a special character. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet is thought to have a peculiar cosmic significance, having come into being as an emanation from God. One scholar writes: “Every letter represents a whole world to the mystic who abandons himself to its contemplation.” Sad to say, there is no F in the Hebrew alphabet—sometimes the Hebrew P is our P, sometimes our Ph (or F). Even with that schizophrenia, it’s worth reporting the alchemical associations assigned to the Hebrew P: North, Jupiter, Thursday, the right nostril, and dominion/slavery. The last item is especially interesting as my interviews often elicited comments about F’s aggressiveness or, more often, weakness!
By now thoroughly fettered to F, I began accosting perfectly uninterested people with the startling assertion that I was investigating “the inner nature” of a certain letter of the alphabet. I cautioned them not to think of words that begin with this letter but to reflect on the letter itself. Once they had absorbed this novelty, I asked: “What kind of letter is F?” After probing their initial answers, I went on to ask how they positioned F on spectrums from clean to dirty, strong to weak, and masculine to feminine? With remarkable uniformity, my dozen or so respondents perceived F as weak, dirty and (sorry) feminine. A decidedly Yin grouping. The chief exception occurred when people were visualizing a capital F, usually perceived as strong and masculine (but still weak architecturally). As you might expect, people gave different answers depending on whether they were imagining the shape of F or f. However, it’s the sound that’s the thing and the answers were far more uniform once people were asked to forget the visual and to concentrate wholly on the fff sound.
I asked some respondents to go over the alphabet in order to decide which was the weakest sounding letter? Sometimes J and K were mentioned but F always won.
I now have a file full of surprising remarks. Space being limited, I’ll simply record some of my favorites:
“A small letter. The sound is small. And aloof.” (Newspaper Publisher)
“It’s crazy, It’s a ne’er-do-well letter. It doesn’t look good. I don’t like either of the shapes. It’s like a top-heavy woman. It’s because my name begins with F that I don’t like it…It’s a bad letter, independent of my name.” (Photographer)
“It’s a juicy letter because there’s spit when I make the sound.” (Writer).
“Doesn’t impress me. Not a very forceful letter. Very mediocre to me. Very bland. I just feel it’s a very limp letter. Maybe because it’s a soft, obscure sound. Hidden. It’s a hidden letter all by its teary little self.” (Secretary)
“It starts off strong but it sort of fades out…A sigh at the end…Sounds like smoke-filled rooms.” (College Student)
“Soft, fuzzy. Drifts off into a bunch of soft sounds.” (Publishing Assistant)
“It’s a sexy letter. Maybe because it’s made with lips and teeth.” (College Teacher)
“I think it’s a dark letter. When I think of it, it’s black. Friday starts with F and Friday’s black. All words that start with F are black…Not one of my most favorite letters… To the ear it’s not a pleasant sound…F is a letter that people who stutter mispronounce a lot…Maybe it’s the only letter that you have to put your teeth to your lips. Maybe this isn’t pleasant…The teeth actually leave the mouth. It’s aggressive…When you are angry, it’s sort of pleasurable to use that mouth work. It takes more mouth to say it.” (Banker, clearly thinking toward the end of “Fuck you!”)
My mother, a painter, finally helped me see F’s tragic flaw. “I don’t think it’s a particularly pleasing sound,” she said, and I kept asking Why? “It doesn’t roll off your tongue,” she said. “Maybe it’s harder to say. You’ve still got the sound in your mouth.”
Ah, it was that last curious phrase that made me realize F is distinguished, at the end of its pronunciation, by a little downward hook. There is this long leaking of breath, of life, as you say the sound, and then, unlike any other letter, a final little deflation. And in so far as I have reached any answer at all from studying this miscellany of postcards from a world beyond language, it is this: that F’s special darkness derives from its soft expiration and final death. A little linguistic funeral, you might say. It’s as though, in saying the letter, you are faltering, failing and then, with a little gasp, you give up life altogether. So that F, more than any other letter, encapsulates the experience of failing and death and brings these fatal redolences, like hovering ghosts, to many a shadowed word.
EPISTOLA {Karl F. Heumann}
I raise the ante in the freight train (or boxcar) competition with this fragment that Fineman says he kept out of The Physical Review (but published in Science):
…the rare-earth local moment-free electron-like conduction electron exchange integral compling…
He goes on to say that “Hyphens are generally avoided in the freight train construction except where they add significantly to the confusion.”
As long as I have the editor’s attention I will ask if readers know of another word, besides ‘mantissa’ (or mantisa), that is believed to derive from both Welsh and Etruscan?
[Karl F. Heumann, Bethesda, Maryland]
You Say “Lieutenant,” I Say “Leftenant”: Linguistic Notes on the Canadian Unity Crisis
Jeff Miller, Toronto, Canada
There’s a difference of opinion up here, north of the border, that seems to be both symbolic and symptomatic. No one can agree on the pronunciation of the word lieutenant.
Language trouble is common in Canada, which—in its youth and the dark shadow of the U.S.—frequently experiences identity pangs that arise from its French and British colonial childhood and prides itself on its “mosaic” philosophy of acculturation (versus the U.S.’s old melting-pot idea). Much of the growing obloquy between the French-speaking majority in the province of Quebec and “English” Canada—“officially,” the rest of the country, or as Mordecai Richler says, “little, unobtrusive us”—is based on particularly frequent, knock-about linguistic skirmishes. I’ve taken to seeing the lieutenant tussle as allegory for this confrontation, for what our journalists call “the national unity crisis”—the threat that Quebec, Canada’s second most populous province, may opt out of Anglo-oriented Confederation in favor of independent, Franco-oriented nationhood. (That people in the Atlantic provinces—New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island—have on occasion spoken seriously of joining the U.S. should Quebec secede in an indication of the emotional state the “crisis” sometimes fosters here.)
Here’s how the lieutenant problem manifests itself. Gord, a fourth generation Canadian, is at a party in Toronto’s chic Yorkville area—our Greenwich Village. (A fellow expatriated Ugly American, a musician from Hawaii, assures me all so-called Anglophone Canadians are named Gord. His name is Sam.) Inevitably, a portly, russet-mustachioed gentleman in rumpled plaid or tweeds approaches G. and, wafting Earl Grey or Gilbey’s upwind of him, asks something like, “Have you ever read The French ‘Leftenant’s’ Woman?” The important point is, Gord’s response will depend upon what colonial influence predominates his speech and perception patterns.
If he’s a Royalist (usually one of those blood-minded bassets and a recent immigrant himself, here largely by default as a “citizen of the Commonwealth,” who still mourns the attrition of The British Empire and sends embroidered pillows to Queen Elizabeth) or one of those folks from Newfoundland or towns bordering the U.S. who’ve acquired Oxonian mannerisms as a reaction formation to their environments, he will immediately understand the man. He will thus respond appropriately, perhaps adding something impressive about the book’s narrative style.
If he has never heard of the word “leftenant,” he is likely from one of the prairie provinces or is a recent U.S. immigrant, and will probably change the subject to Winnebagos or the humidity.
But if he speaks French, or is sensitive to the politics of language, or both, he may recognize that this pronunciation is a form of reverse snobbery, comparable to that of pronouncing the “z” (pronounced “zee” or “zed,” which is an even more confounding aspect of the problem) in rendezvous. He will probably reply, “You are speaking of The French Lieutenant’s [pronounced “lyootenants”] Woman by John Fowles [pronounced?]. I found it a very complex and intriguing investigation of both narrative technique, as with the films of Godard, and the legacy of Victoriana in contemporary England.”
You see, I’ve done some checking. The English lieutenant is a direct cognate from the French. It derives from tenant ‘taking or holding’ and lieu ‘place or stead’ and referred to one ‘who took the place of the French king as his representative.
But even the Oxford English Dictionary, that curmudgeonly packrat of the tongue, can’t explain the solecistic origins of the “f” and “v” forms of the word (of which there must be one hundred permutations and combinations) in its native land. It can only mumble through its MacBarren’s-redolent beard that they are “difficult to explain.” It goes on to surmise, still somewhat embarrassed but gaining confidence, that “the labial glide at the end of the Old French lieu” may have been mistaken at some time or other by some Brit. or other. It does not, however, proffer a guess at the nature of this person’s affliction, that he could hear or see anybody’s labia gliding or otherwise engaging themselves at the pronunciation of lieu.
Whoever this unfortunate soul was, his misaudition blew through the language like an east wind. He had half of medieval England running around saying “leaftenand” and “leyftenaunt,” while the other half muttered bilious compromises like “lutenand” and “lyeutenaunte.” All through the 14th century, one imagines, people went on pilgrimages to Canterbury or threw bones on the floor at feasts and things, tongue-tied and dyspeptic when the discussion turned to military matters.
The OED further explains that by 1480, the dawning of the Renaissance, Caxton pioneered the printed English malapropism with “lyeutenaunt,” a variant close enough to the pure form that things seemed almost to be looking up. Indeed, by some happy accident of recidivism, in 1481 he was printing “lieutenant.” But sadly, by 1489, probably confused by what he was hearing at ye olde innes and church suppers, he typeset the unfortunate phrase, “Made him seneschall and leeftenaunt generall of the royalme.” What Ben Jonson had in mind with “lieutenant-Coronell” in 1598 is another, perhaps equally unfortunate matter.
Ultimately, some other Englishman or other brought the poisonous malapropism over here, contaminating the fragile Canadian body politic with a rash of colonial “loo-,” “lieu-” and “lef-”tenants and, partially at least, the schizophrenia behind it. Of course, a cure is being sought, in some cases desperately. Though, as far as I know, advice from the Usage Panel at The American Heritage Dictionary (slightly higher in Canada) has not been requested, a TV series called “The Let’s Save Canada Hour” has been produced. There’s Prime Minister Trudeau’s oblique threat of force to keep Canada together, made in Vail at Gerald Ford’s condominium. There’s a book apocalyptically titled Bi-Lingual Today, French Tomorrow, which disallows the French any language rights, and which private citizens began hawking (at a rate of 1,000 books a day; compare to a recent short-story collection, The Butterfly Ward, which was rated a national bestseller after having sold 3,000 copies in a year), when some bookstores refused to stock it. And then there’s the budding U.S. Expansionist Party.
In the early fall of 1977, The Toronto Globe and Mail carried a front-page story about the Expansionists, with the headline, also apocalyptic, “New U.S. Party Seeking to Annex Canada.” An Expansionist spokesman told John Picton, the Globe reporter, that the party had similar designs on Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand (somehow, the line-up looks familiar, but it may be too early to tell). “If Quebec decides that geography and economics are as important as language,” the spokesman said, “They would be welcome. But it would be their choice.” He added— quite seriously, apparently—that the new alliance might be called “The United States of Canada” since Canada “is such an inoffensive name.” At that date, mail to the party from Canadians was “running four to one” in favor of the idea.
Evidently, Expansionist Party members have not heard of Shell Canada, IBM Canada, GM Canada, Ford Canada, Bell Canada, Coca-Cola Canada, McDonald’s Canada…or they’d realize that their goal here is pretty much redundant. They’ll have to take a new tack if they are to gain by and with us. Perhaps they could show us something in the way of a new tongue—Cape Dorset Inuit, maybe. Or how about a nice, basic Cree?
EPISTOLA {Norman Schur}
In Willard Espy’s letter [IV, 2], he quotes part of a letter from Mr. Colin, which in turn quotes part of a letter from a German friend who was puzzled by the phrase ‘bend over backwards.’ In his letter, Mr. Colin says, “I used the phrase bend (or lean) over backwards (in a letter to his German friend). This implies that Mr. Colin thinks that bending and leaning mean the same thing in this context. They would appear not to. One leans over backward (or backwards) to establish one’s freedom from bias or prejudice, like a judge who disqualifies himself because he casually knows a distant relative of one of the parties. One bends over backward (or backwards) to achieve any type of result (not just freedom from prejudice), like a business man doing everything possible to satisfy a customer. So much for American English. In British English, these expressions do appear to be synonymous, both meaning to ‘go to extremes’ or ‘do one’s utmost,’ as, for instance, in an attempt to see the other fellow’s point of view in an argument. What is more, Britons not only lean and bend; they also fall over backwards, and all three usages are used the same way, although Britons seem to bend or lean oftener than they fall.
In the 1973 edition of my Anglo-American dictionary, I included the following entry:
fall over backwards, lean over backwards
Uncharacteristically, in this case the British overstate.
[Norman Schur, Weston, Connecticut]
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: SYMBOLIC LOGIC
Lewis Carroll: Part I-Elementary, 1896-Fifth Edition; Part II-Advanced, never previously published. Edited, with annotations and an introduction, by William Warren Bartley, III. Illustrated with photographs, charts and diagrams, manuscript pages, and drawings. (Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., New York, 1977).
Here is a volume for gamboling. Nearly half of its material is published for the first time. It will be of particular interest to Lewis Carroll devotees, fans of his sort of logic puzzle, and historians of nineteenth-century logic. It is a handsomely produced book that will sit well on any reading table, and it has a striking story behind it. Bartley is to be thanked for bringing it to us.
Carroll’s flavorful prose and whimsical examples are delicious, but they are intended more as condiments than as the book’s meat. For the work is genuinely a symbolic logic treatise, replete with servings of logic diagrams and algebraic notation. While Carroll wanted to entertain and amuse, his greater purpose was to popularize the subject and teach its methods. He systematizes at length — and with admirable skill — what was seen in his day as the heart of deductive logic. By modern lights what is treated is only a minor part of that subject, so that today’s student of logic may regard the treatment as limited and repetitive. But for a technical book of another time it affords an unusual degree of pleasure.
Part I comprises roughly half the volume; this is the first new edition of it since Carroll’s death in 1898. The editor has added Carroll’s solutions to some of the problems, but other changes from previous editions are minor. Part II consists mainly of material not heretofore published. Bartley recounts his search for its parts in his lengthy Introduction to the book. The search spanned eighteen years. Using sources in both England and America, he pieced together scattered portions of Carroll’s manuscript and unearthed galley proofs whose existence was all but unknown. Judiciously arranged and edited, what is assembled provides a reasonable sequel to Part I. Still, Bartley argues that “some material must be missing.”
The logic to which Carroll addresses himself lies within the compass of Aristotelian logic. It concerns primarily sentences whose underlying forms are “All a are b,” “No a are b,” and “Some a are b,” though Carroll’s English substituends for “a” and “b” are often quite complicated. Thus Carroll’s logic is logic in the tradition of Boole, Jevons, and Venn. It is aimed at solving problems, not at developing metatheory. Typically, Carroll gives a collection of premises and asks what conclusion, if any, can be derived therefrom — and whether any of the premises are superfluous. As Bartley puts it, “Logic as presented by Carroll is no aid towards the foundations of mathematics but a kind of instructional aid, of obvious pedagogical utility, for detectives. It is almost as if Sherlock Holmes had commissioned Carroll to aid in the education of poor Dr. Watson.” (p. 24)
In Part I Carroll studies syllogisms and relatively simple soriteses [sic]. He gives a diagrammatic method that is much like Venn’s, and brings it to life with a colorful exposition in terms of a board and counters. Also he develops a purely notational technique, his “method of subscripts.” With three straightforward rules (p. 126) this becomes a calculus for handling syllogisms, and it extends readily to the sorites. There are examples and problems by the hundred, with solutions. They are adorned with such premises as these: “No lambs are animals accustomed to smoke cigars”; “Inaudible music is not worth paying for”; “Some lions do not drink coffee”; “No ostrich lives on mince-pies”; “A fish, that cannot dance a minuet, is contemptible.”
Part II extends Part I, though not really radically. The arguments studied run to greater complexity. Premises with more than two terms appear: e.g., “All ac not-1 not-e are not-k” and “All not-lek are d” are renditions of premises of the “Pork-Chop Problem,” cast in the abstract form employed by Carroll. There are glimpses of truth-functional connections; still, they do not lead to anything more involved than “Whenever some of the Germans are not playing chess, and some of the Welsh are not eating toasted cheese, none of the Irish are fighting,” which Carroll unpacks to “If some n are not p, and some j are not k, then no g are h.” The number of premises escalates; it reaches as high as fifty in one sorites. Again there are examples and problems galore, and solutions for them. Many are to be savored for their wit.
To deal with these increasingly complex problems Carroll provides a “method of trees,” a graphic technique that establishes conclusions by reductio ad absurdum. This is the book’s most sophisticated method. In modern terms, it may be seen as a decision procedure that is adequate for much that falls within the scope of monadic quantification theory. Carroll introduces the method to the reader by painstaking soliloquy; this is pedagogical genius. It is Carroll at his happiest, too: We find him saying “Now there is no reason to be so lavish of accommodation for this pampered Class b ‘c’: it ought to be quite content with one appearance.” Primes are signs for complementation in Carroll’s notation.
Carroll’s adeptness at developing appropriate notation and computational techniques stands out clearly; he was a remarkable symbolic logician for his time. Current methods have broader scope and greater efficiency, but Carroll’s still pass muster where they apply. His formal treatment is in no way vitiated by his persistence in granting statements of the form “All a are b” existential import. He interprets such a statement as expressing both “No a are b’ ” and “Some a exist”; the construal now favored by logicians takes it to express the former only. Carroll argues somewhat lamely for his view. His persistence seems to have been prompted, in part, by notational considerations, even as the modern attitude has been fostered by systematic ones.
There is rich fare for the philosopher and historian of logic — alternate versions of Carroll puzzles and paradoxes, portions of Carroll’s correspondence, especially with Cook Wilson, and Bartley’s editorial analyses. There are eight versions of the “Barber-Shop Paradox,” which turns on the issue of whether “If Allen goes out, Brown does not go out” is compatible with “If Allen goes out, Brown goes out.” There are Achilles and the Tortoise, problems about self-reference, and many others. Some of this material has appeared before, but its assemblage in the present volume is more than welcome.
The volume is enormously enhanced by reproductions of a large number of Carroll’s handwritten manuscript pages and letters. We see solutions to problems as he set them down, and we see copies of his letters to Wilson and to his “mathematical sister” Louisa Dodgson. The book also contains various charts, drawings, and photographs, and it has a helpful index. It can be enjoyed in many ways.
[Joe Ullian, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
The prominently displayed name of the “half-size” or “fat-lady” department in Bullock’s Department store in California is called Lady Bullock. [Colleen Arndt, Morgan Hill, California]
Cheers & JEERS
“The minister, the overseer, and the churchwarden of a parish in Kent, after setting forth the misery of a young man who was afflicted with a rupture, proceed to address the public in the following terms: ‘His friends applied to several gentlemen for a cure, but all proved ineffectual, and wore a truss, till we sent him to Mr. Woodward at the King’s Arms, near Half-Moon street, Piccadilly.’ It appears, therefore, that several gentlemen, in the zeal of their compassion, not only applied for advice, but actually wore a truss for this unfortunate youth; who would, notwithstanding, still have continued to languish in great misery, if they had not at last sent him to Mr. Woodward.”— The Adventurer, London, Number 15, Tuesday, December 26, 1752. [Hugo G. Rodeck, Northglenn, Colorado]
The latest bit of idiocy concocted by the moron fringe is the captive “hold” music one is subjected to when waiting to speak to someone on the telephone. Several companies have contracted for this “service.” The music, which sounds very much like the canned rubbish one becomes captive to in public terminals, while waiting for planes to take off, and under other, similar circumstances, is atrocious. One company we called recently had the “hold” connected to a radio station, and we were forced to listen to two minutes of commercials while waiting. There ought to be a law.
An editorial warning that shoppers seem to be showing diminishing loyalty toward advertised brand names bears the headline, “Has branded merchandise Peter-Principled?” (Chain Store Age/Supermarkets, January 1978). Oh, how I would love to Peter-Principle the fellow who verbed that noun! [David Stone, Chicago, Illinois]
Misnomers perpetuated: pierced earrings (supplied with their own ears?); drip-dry hangers (just wet them and they drip-dry?); self-storage (put yourself on the shelf?); traffic lights bearing the legend, Stop When Flashing (= all exhibitionists must be stationary?). [Barbara Ivantcho, San Francisco, California]
McGrew’s Yukon Inn, Whitehorse, Canada, offers an 8-course “Chinese Smorgasbord” every Sunday from 5:00 to 10:00 p.m. [Arthur Meggett, Hamilton, New York]
EPISTOLA {Leon E. Boodey}
…I see now that my own Leon’s Law is only a small fragment of this great conspiracy. Leon’s Law merely states what everyone has noticed with regard to restaurants, automobiles, lovers, mechanics and periodicals: If you should ever happen to find something that is really good, it will soon disappear. No exceptions have ever come to my attention. Perhaps this is why I’m only subscribing for one year.
[Leon E. Boodey, Broomall, Pennsylvania]
EPISTOLA {Jim Robinson}
“Regional Report # 1-The Bay Area” [IV, 4], while offering some insights into trends in American usage (not strictly peculiar to the Bay area), is guilty of what I shall refer to as ‘The Edwin Newman Syndrome’ and moves me to jot this note of mild protest. In it we see offered pell-mell ostensibly under a single rubric what are by any standards outrageous abuses of proper usage (e.g. “arms and legs akimbo”) juxtaposed with nonce and portmanteau words that should not be condemned a priori simply because they are unfamiliar and hence at first blush barbaric. The neologism “critiqueing” is a case in point. It is difficult to see what objection the author raises to this happy verbal, since it fills a lacuna: it is at once shorter than “making a critique” and more specific than “criticizing,” which has negative connotations (the Darbelnet Theorem, after the French linguist Jean Darbelnet, states that any word which acquires pejorative connotations gradually loses its positive or neutral meanings in favor of the negative). The other gerunds in this series seem to me similarly justifiable in that they answer a need for brevity, with emphasis on the activity. American English has always tended toward a racy, streamlined verb rather than the stodgy, pompous equivalent verbal phrases; this is why French, which is unable, for morphological reasons, to accommodate itself to this inflectional cloning, seems to us so stiff and formal. If we can have “babysitting” and “weightlifting,” why not “pickpocketing”?
In summary, when “critiqueing” directions in the living language, one should take care to isolate the truly abusive from the merely curious and perhaps legitimate, and, secondly, avoid confusing the descriptive and the normative (or prescriptive).
[Jim Robinson, Bluffton, South Carolina]
EPISTOLA {Donald E. Schmiedel}
Our comprehension of the etymology of the word gringo seems to be going from bad to worse and your inclusion of my name along with Dr. Kaminer’s letter [IV, 3] associates me with a totally unacceptable explanation.
As John Ciardi pointed out a few months ago in Saturday Review, gringo can be traced to the early 17th century in Spain. (See Juan Corominas, Diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana.) It is an alteration of the word griego, Greek, but has no more to do with an Anglo mispronunciation than it does with those cursed green growing rushes (or lilacs) which I hope have now withered for good.
Gringo is used in some South American countries to refer to any foreigner, not just to a yanqui. In the famous gaucho epic Martín Fierro by Argentine poet José Hernández, the gringo is an Italian!
[Donald E. Schmiedel, Las Vegas, Nevada]
I’m Sorry! -Ed.
EPISTOLA {Giles Zimmer}
Robert J. L. Waugh’s little article [IV, 3] on passing flatus amused me no end as any discussion of euphemisms and their plain counterparts usually does. The cuphemisms for bodily functions (function words?) are particularly intriguing. I have always found it preposterously hilarious the way the Wife of Bath’s quoniam and Alison’s queynte in the Miller’s Tale are both glossed as “pudendum.” The first time I read this word, I had to look it up although I had a pretty good idea from context just what Chaucer’s plain words meant.
But back to flatus. One euphemism for it that always breaks me up is “to break wind.” This was never part of my vocabulary until I looked it up one day. I was reading that delightful medieval poem, “The Cuckoo Song,” and came to the verse, “Bulloc sterteth, bucke verteth.” The first three words didn’t bother me, but the fourth one did. The gloss promptly informed me that it meant “to break wind.” My dictionary very guardedly defined the euphemism so that I had to read it twice to get the picture. Since then I have taught the poem numerous times and always break up my class with my own translation of “Bull starts, buck farts” and an accompanying explanation about fresh green pastures in springtime. I really think that beats “breaking wind.”
Another one of those hushed up words is “piss.” People actually are embarrassed hearing the word—such is its stigma. What they don’t know is that once upon a time it was as respectable as any old euphemism. Teaching in the Bible Belt as I do, I find it interesting to watch the reactions of some students to Old Testament passages that actually use the word. 2 Kings 18, 27 and 1 Sam. 25, 22 (King James version) work well as illustrations of the pejoration of that word. The students are simply dumbfounded to hear that the Good Book has dirty words.
[Giles Zimmer, Batesville, Ark.]
EPISTOLA {Don Pardee Brown}
The piece by Walburga von Raffler-Engel “We Do Not Talk Only With Our Mouths” [IV, 4] is a valuably informative article. Unfortunately it is wormy with thoughtless statements and concepts, and obstructs rather than advances clear thinking about communication, particularly about language.
Her opening falsehood almost blocked my further read. ing. The initial phrase, “In the past,” followed by “linguists have analyzed…” arrested me. When, for God’s sake, other than in the past could linguists have done anything? If this be nit-picking, the article calls for it. To say that linguists have analyzed language as if words were the only means of conveying a message is wild writing. I’d be impressed if she could name, out of the thousands of language analysts, even five or six who are guilty of her first charge. Her second — “They” have ignored the fact that human communication is a combination of words and gestures — is also egregiously irresponsible.
Language — by etymology, by scholarly tradition, and by common sense — is man’s communicative use of the tongue. Its powerful advantage over other communicative media — including smoke signals, sky writing, grimaces and other gestures — is that it works in the dark, goes over hills and down dales, penetrates tent fabrics, goes around corners, makes talk shows and other radio programs possible, and accounts for Bell Tel’s massive profits.
Communication is a big area. It includes tom-tom, smoke, wire, and wireless telegraph. It includes the signals of crickets, birds, and dolphins. It includes cinema, fresco, and every other form of art that isn’t merely self-expression. It includes smirks, caresses, winks, sneers, and leers. The highest form known to man is the oral-aural system. It cannot wisely be confused with any other. Strictly — which is to say thoughtfully — speaking, it is called language. To call any other signal system language except metaphorically is to welcome chaos into a complex preserve that is already sadly confused. To refer to a set of body signals, for example, as a tongue except with tongue well in cheek is expensive nonsense.
Every prominent linguist with whom I have worked or conversed — and I can name fifteen in thirty seconds — was more sensitive to the relations among verbal and non-verbal signal systems than Walburga von Raffler-Engel seems to be. She needs, fortunately, only to clean up her act. Then her attack on linguists won’t be just another flea scaling an elephant’s aft with rape in his eyes.
[Don Pardee Brown, Redwood City, California]
EPISTOLA {Walburga von Raffler-Engel}
Professor von Raffler-Engel replies:
I was rather pleased when reading Mr. Brown’s comment on my article. Essentially, he agrees with my position on the impossibility of fully understanding verbal language when it is analyzed in total isolation from the other communicative modalities that are consistently associated with it in the natural setting. I am glad that he could easily identify fifteen of my fellow linguists who share our concern. Not being a professional linguist himself (I could not find his name in the membership directory of the Linguistic Society of America nor in the Directory of American Scholars), Mr. Brown may not be familiar with the history of linguistics.
During the forties and the early fifties, the importance of gestures, which had been pointed out by Trager and Pike, was an accepted fact. Then there came a period when language was analyzed “scientifically,” and this term was not understood to mean systematic, exact, exhaustive, non-contradictory, and non-falsifiable but referred mainly to the methodological rigor inherent in one particular analytical procedure. That particular methodology called generative-transformational did not include paralanguage, kinesics, or cultural influences. In 1971, the theory of language acquisition (which I had proposed in a book published in 1964 — and which was based on an interactionalist model and traced language development to the cry of the infant and to his pointing gestures) was termed a non-theory because it was not in agreement with the then prevailing theory of language acquisition. Language was supposed to begin with grammar, and prelanguage was in no way relevant to the development of speech. In 1972, at a meeting on the methodology for dialect research, I presented a paper on the relation of verbal and non-verbal behavior in inter-ethnic code switching, only to be told by Raven McDavid, who is one of the most outstanding dialectologists in this country, that research in non-verbal behavior warranted as little serious attention as do the irrelevant sociolinguistic observations of William Labov. (At least I was in good company.) In 1973, Gordon Hewes, in an excellent article in Current Anthropology, felt it necessary to remark on “the long obsession of linguists with speech as the only ‘true form’ of language.”
Even as recently as last year, when I suggested a special session on kinesics to the organizing committee of the International Congress of Linguists, I was informed that this subject matter was “marginal” and that papers on non-verbal behavior would be scheduled in the section on Semiotics, as if the spoken language were not as much a semiotic system as the non-verbal forms of communication and as if the latter were not more closely linked to verbal language than animal communication. As it turned out, the section on Semiotics at that congress had some very interesting papers on non-verbal behavior.
I do not wish to imply that linguists do not recognize kinesics as a legitimate field of scholarly inquiry. Most linguists nowadays would include it alongside verbal language within the study of communication. Where, in my opinion, linguists by and large are still behind psychologists and anthropologists is in their attempt to study language acquisition and speech programming as a self-contained process without reference to the accompanying body motions and the social factors which influence communicative behavior. The climate is changing, and more and more psycholinguists are now working from a broader base. Recent textbooks in introductory linguistics are starting to include full chapters on kinesics.
If my article implies that spoken language is not a superb human accomplishment, I must not have expressed myself clearly. My point is that the oral-aural mode is intricately combined with the tactile-visual mode. Some very important research by Peyton Todd has documented this in his case study on the structural interference across sensory modalities in second language learning. We cannot disregard the fact that human communication is multi-channel, as Birdwhistell put it many years ago.
[Walburga von Raffler-Engel, Vanderbilt University]
EPISTOLA {Kay McKemy}
A little knowledge of prefixes can be a dangerous thing, as illustrated by the following: Two very whispery ladies sat next to me at a Wednesday matinee recently, the Broadway production of Otherwise Engaged. When one actor accused another of being a “latent pederast,” the two talkative friends held a buzzy discussion. At intermission one turned to me and asked, “Do you understand all those things they said?”
“Uh, yes,” I admitted.
“Well, what is that ‘pederast’ thing?”
“It’s a form of sexual perversion,” I explained quietly.
“Oh. OH!” my neighbor exclaimed. “I see! PEDerast, p-e-d.
It must be something they do with their feet.”
I headed for the bar.
[Kay McKemy, Armonk, New York]
EPISTOLA {Clair A. Schulz}
The February VERBATIM contains several letters that comment on my essay on rock. I believe all of the correspondents were sincere in their desire to be helpful, and it is in the same spirit of sincerity that I respond to some of their statements.
I realize that Taj Mahal is a person, but Taj Mahal is also the name of the group identified with the man just as Eumir Deodato and the musicians who accompany him are considered collectively as Deodato.
I was aware of the Latin derivations of Ars Nova and Procol Harum, but I forced them into categories where I thought they would be more easily recognized. It was a case of round pegs and square holes.
The placement of Sopwith Camel and the Beatles is a matter of personal opinion; I considered shifting the former to transportation and the latter to music, but ultimately decided to leave them with the animals. There were other difficult decisions: Should the Flying Burrito Brothers be classified with food or relatives? Does Blue Oyster Cult belong with food or colors? Does Buffalo Springfield belong with animals or guns and, if the latter, should it be dropped because it is the only group related to weaponry? Choices, sometimes arbitrary ones, had to be made.
I thank the gentleman for explaining how Booker T. and the M.G.’s and Fleetwood Mac were created. The major difficulty in attempting to uncover the roots of groups is that, prior to publication of my essay, practically nothing was written about the origins of their names. Finding any information about some groups was an exercise in frustration because none of the sources are definitive. Rock magazines like Creem and Crawdaddy are not very helpful. Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia, published in 1969, concentrates on groups popular in the sixties. Dick Clark’s Rock, Roll, and Remember is superficial. Even The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll is selective. I searched through back issues of Billboard and combed through racks of records in stores to fill in the gaps. After weeks of preparation, all I had were lists of groups that said nothing about what inspired the artists to choose their names. Therefore, I was forced to engage in “prudent speculation.” For example, I thought it reasonable to assume that the M.G.’s were related to automobiles; I was wrong. I was more fortunate in assuming that the group L.T.D. borrowed their name from the car. Once, however, even my eyes failed me. I had stated in the essay that the Runaways were all females. I had taken their names right off a record album: Sandy West, Cherrie Currie, Jackie Fox, Lita Ford, Joan Jett. I even looked at an album cover that featured a photo of the group wearing matching outfits. All five had long hair and stared into the camera with similar sultry expressions. Based upon this information, I made one of my prudent speculations. Wrong. Sandy is a male. This would never have happened if they hadn’t allowed women to wear pants!
Even after I submitted the manuscript the second time I had the distinct feeling that, although I was done with the project, it would never be finished with me. At night the Ghosts of Rock Past rock past: “There were Four Tunes, Aces, Preps, Freshmen, Tops, Fellows, and Lads, but weren’t there Four Coins, too?” “What about the Sir Douglas Quintet? Would they go with numerical or monarchical groups?” “Couldn’t you find a place for Aerosmith? How about Herman’s Hermits? And Blood, Sweat, and Tears?” Ad infinitum, add insomnia.
And yet, despite the “blood, sweat, and tears” and second-guessing, I don’t believe the article was more trouble than it was worth. I enjoyed the searching and the organizing. I was as thorough in my research as my sources allowed me to be, and I did not intend to mislead readers with incorrect information. Certainly “We Shall Know Them By Their Roots” will not be the last word on the subject; the letters in the February issue prove that.
[Clair A. Schulz, Clinton, Wisconsin]
Crossword Puzzle
Across
1. Figaro’s dance, to the tune of an old quartet. (10)
6. Jet-set enthusiasm? (4)
8. Strung up and along. (2, 6)
9. Reward as the fruit of one’s labors. (5)
10. A significant number sit back and join in the CB squawking. (9)
12. Article and lecture the fighter followed were really acid. (9)
14. Religious folk gathered at the river. (5)
17. Early Rimsky-Korsakov opus was a heavy knockout. (5)
19. There’s no grace in the law for such a blind spot. (9)
20. Shut up and don’t divorce her!(2, 4, 3)
23. Stop, even though it switches to amber. (5)
24. The proper relations for flying right? (6, 8)
25. Student of adult psychology. (4)
26. They have the sexiest lines in Hollywood. (10)
Down
1. He went down, missing in action, but snob turns up around the Villagers. (9)
2. Curly was allowed in when the gang formed. (9)
3. If it’s that triangle it will never die. (7, 4)
4. Do-it-yourself set on board, according to the sketches. (5)
5. Freedom of choice about time of performance. (9)
6. Different ways of getting along with horses. (5)
7. Staying where it’s darkest. (7)
11. Fighter plane to send haywire chopper into the ground. (11)
13. Where to keep old saws? (9)
15. Inferior elevators. (9)
16. Dogmatic one among various others of that ilk…(9)
18. …who, in angry dispute, throw ack-ack around. (1, 3, 3)
21. Put out, with no thanks! (5)
22. The oxy kind is a grim jest of a limited mind. (5)
Crossword Puzzle Answers
Across
1. Barber’s-hop
6. Gush
8. Hanged in effigy
9. Melon
10. STA-tis-TIC
12. An-TALK-Ali
14. Trent
17. Sad-KO
19. I-g-NO-ra-N-ce
20. To keep mum
23. EMBAR
24. Wright brothers
25. Brat
26. Scenarists
Down
1. BO-he-MIA-NS
2. RING-let-ED
3. Eternal love
4. S-kit-S
5. OP-era-TION
6. Gaits
7. STYGIAN
11. Inter-CEPTOR
13. Axiom-AT(T)IC
15. Ennoblers
16. THEOR-ist-S
18. A hot w-A-r
21. Evict
22. Moron
Internet Archive copy of this issue
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A full history of the “periphrastic do” is to be found in Part Three of the monumental An Historical Syntax of the English Language, by F.Th. Visser (Leiden, Brill. 1969), pp 1503-08. ↩︎
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And let us not overlook the closet cases: phobia, phoney, and phlegm. Or that inconspicuous group illustrated by defile, defamation, defect, or refuse. (It is fascinating to me as a writer that the F-words are often far more powerful than the synonymous words: can dirty compete with filthy, changeable with fickle, or run with flee? And, furthermore, F is father of many an odd and peerless word: fussbudget, flimflam, and flibbertigibbet.) ↩︎