VOL VII, No 2 [Autumn 1980]

Unofficial Sectional City Names

Frederic G. Cassidy, Dictionary of American Regional English

Within almost any city or large town we find names that long-time residents know and use regularly, though they are not given on maps or in guidebooks. American cities distinguish subsections name-wise by compass direction, by topography, by occupational, ethnic, and other connections. Some are commonplace, repeated from city to city; other are lively, imaginative, and reveal people’s attitudes. I remember a Madison, Wisconsin, bus driver announcing, as we approached the crossing of Park and Regent Streets, “Spaghetti Corners!”—and indeed there were two restaurants and two Italian grocery stores at that intersection.

Some of these nicknames are regionally distinctive. From the field collections of the Dictionary of American Regional English (1002 Questionairs completed in fifty states) a large body of responses has been compiled from many kinds of local informants, on which basis one can generalize with reasonable certainty.

Question 1124 was “Names or nicknames for the part of a town where the well-off people live,” and the complementary question 1125 was “Names or nicknames for the part of a town where the poorer people, special groups, or foreign groups live.” To judge by frequency of responses alone, the chief dividing line in any American town or city is the railroad track—a line that separates residents economically and socially as well as geographically. The well-off people live on this side or the right side of the (railroad) tracks (61 responses); the poorer people live on the wrong side or across or on the other side of the (railroad) tracks (456 responses). Not only were the tracks mentioned more than seven times as often for the second question as for the first, but there were four times as many variant forms. The nucleus is the tracks or the railroad tracks; variations come in the preceding words: usually the wrong side, or the other side, but also the opposite, or south side of the tracks, as well as across, below, by, over, beyond, down by, down across, and down below the tracks. The variations themselves are of little importance; the fact that more than half our informants in fifty states used one of these phrases is certainly significant. Social geographers are aware of this, of course; it is interesting to find concurrent evidence from a linguistic survey.

Returning to the first question, no single term for the well-off residential area stood out over all others, but there were 51 responses for Nob Hill and its variants. This name became famous in San Francisco and has spread for over a century all over the country—to New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Arizona in the symbolic sense (not to mention actual borrowings of the name). Nob, an imported English slang abbreviation for nobility, suits “the well-off people” and the sense of the question. But what person living under the hill could resist turning nob into snob? Exactly the same number of informants (51) gave us Snob Hill and its variants Snob’s Knob, Snob’s Alley, Snob’s Row, Snob’s Slough, Snob’s Point, and Snubsville. We have to get our social revenge where and as we can.

As indicative of a probably world-wide pattern of wealthier people building on high ground, the generic hill appears in many other names. Among the commoner ones are: Mortgage Hill (36 responses), betraying sardonic envy; Pill Hill (6 responses) and Doctor’s Row (3), where rich doctors live; Society Hill (4); Quality Hill (3); Millionaire Hill (2); Aristocracy Hill (1); or merely The Hill (21 responses). One name puzzlingly breaks the pattern, yet it is certainly genuine since four people from Michigan and Illinois responded with it: Piety Hill. It could be ironic, implying that the rich consider their wealth as an earned reward from heaven. Finally, Sugar Hill (6 responses) apparently uses the slang sense of sugar as money, and Yankee Hill (from Wisconsin) shows the foreign-born settler’s awareness that the Easterner came first and got the choice residential ground.

The sardonic force of mortgage carries beyond Mortgage Hill to a whole series of variants: Mortgage Row (15 responses). Mortgage Lane (3), Mortgageville (2), Mortgage Heights (2), Mortgage Ward (2), Mortgage Manor (2), and one each of Mortgage Alley, Flat, Hollow, Knob, and Mesa, No doubt the user of these names consoles himself by knowing he won’t have to pay that mortgage. (His own is certainly much smaller!)

Millionaire also produces a series of variants besides hill: Millionaire(s) Row (10 responses); and Millionaire Avenue, Lane, Ridge, and Street (1 each).

Aristocracy or Aristocratic Hill lends itself to punning distortions in Ritzocrats (New York), Roostercrats (Ohio), and Aristocrooked (Pennsylvania) — there’s that cynicism again.

An interesting pair are Striver’s Row and Struggle Hill, somewhat on the same order as the mortgage names. I read them as suggesting that the striving and struggling are overdone: the namer seems to feel these people are too obvious at getting themselves up in the world.

Next after hill the commonest generic is row (several examples already given). The most frequent response of this type was Silk Stocking Row (29 informants), with its variants Silk Stocking Avenue (11), Silk Stocking District (6), Silk Stocking Section (3), Silk Stocking Ward (2), and one each of Silk Stocking Area, Hill, Neighborhood, Road, and Street. The metaphor is interesting — it refers to women rather than men, and it may be less sardonic than some others. With the replacement more than 30 years ago of silk hose by nylon and their accessibility to women of almost any income level, the Silk Stocking names now seem a bit dated. Nevertheless, they must have been widespread and firmly established to have turned up in 54 of our responses.

Another widespread name, The Gold Coast, dates in this sense only from 1920 (so says Mathews' Dictionary of Americanisms), but we had it in 25 responses, chiefly from the upper Mississppi Valley.

The less common names include Bank Row or Bankers' Avenue, and, with a touch of satire, Big-Shots' Street or Town, Big-Bug Hill and Big-Man’s Street. Three scattered responses for the Bon Ton Area, Section, or Part of town seem definitely old-fashioned. Cadillac Alley shows an interesting clash of connotations. Cotillion Corner (from South Carolina) goes back to the antebellum world — perhaps with some nostalgia.

If the better-off people live on high ground, the poorer ones are on low ground, down by the tracks. Railroads were built on low ground for good engineering reasons, but the associated noise, dirt, smells, and low-level damp made their neighborhoods less than ideal for dwelling. However, they were cheaper and usually handy to water, so people who came to ‘build the railroad often stayed. Among common responses were Shantytown (55), Shack Town (4), Shanty Row (2). Railroad tracks often followed river valleys, hence the area names Down by the River, Over the River, Across the Creek, Across the Ditch; similarly, the Other Side of the Bridge, Creek, Railroad, and River. One name recalls a popular song of the 1920s: “Down by the Vinegar Works” (or “Winegar Woiks”). Lower Town and Lowville bear out the same theme.

Nobody likes slums or can remain unaware of them. Many condemn them directly or indirectly with such names as Poverty Row (3), Poverty Flats, Hill, Park, and Peak (2 each); Hungry Hill, Hollow, and Street (1 each), Needmore and Lickskillet (1 each). Of similar type are Ragtown (3), the Jungle (2), Scrabble Town, Scuttle Town, Scum Hollow, Rum Row, Battle Row, and Brickbat Ridge (1 each). Others suggest unpleasantness by association with animals, the pig, with proverbial proclivity for mud or dirt, being the favored unfavorite. Variants were Pig Alley (3), Pig Town, Pigsville, Pigtail Alley, and Piggy Hollow (1 each). Then there were Bedbug Row, Buzzard’s Row, Rat Row, Skunk Road, and Chinch Hill (1 each). Though Dogpatch was mentioned only once, Dogtown was mentioned 6 times. Cigar-box Row suggests the flimsiness of the houses; Tin Can Alley, Blood Alley, and Cesspool Heights are self-explanatory.

Others suggest that these sections are not urban at all but intolerably countrified: Frogtown and Goosetown (3 responses each), Gooseville, Coontown, and Coon Bottom (1 each). These refer to animals. Briar Town refers to plants, and cheap foods and humble living are suggested by Hominy Hill, Potato Row, Cabbage Town, and Sauerkraut Hill. Names from back-country types who are looked down on by city people include Hillbilly Heights, Hillbilly Section, and Conch Town. I do not know what to make of Doodleville, but is is certainly not favorable.

A large number of names simply refer to the foreigners settled in a section together. Though never complimentary, some are at least neutral. To this type, in descending order of frequency, belong Mexican Town (6), Chinatown (5), Irish Town (4), Dutch Town (3), French Town (3), German Town (2), Russia Town (2), Finn Town (2), Swede Town (2), Swede Alley (1), English Town (1). A number of others are more or less unfavorable; Polack Town (4), Jig Town (4), Jew Town (2), Wop Town (2), Wop Flat, Dago Town and Dago Center (1 each). One type of name interesting for its form begins with Little and then names the nationality or ethnic group: Little Italy (15), Little Mexico (3), Little Africa (2), Little Canada (in Massachusetts), Little Chicago (in Ohio), Little Cuba (in Indiana), Little Puerto Rico (in New York), and Little Tijuana (in California). These fall somewhere between neutral and unfavorable — they are certainly not strongly unfavorable. And they are a distinctively American type.

The most conspicuously separate or segregated group of people in American cities — no doubt because of their numbers and racial distinctiveness which make them slower to assimilate — are the Blacks. I regret to report it—but it is the fact—that of ethnic nicknames by far the most frequent response we had was Niggertown (34), and after that Nigger Quarters and Section (4 each) and Nigger Hill (3). Avoiding the objectionable word, the next in frequency were Colored Section (8), Colored Town (5), Colored Settlement (2), Colored Quarters and Valley (1 each). Similarly, Negro Quarters and Section (2 each) and Negro Town (1). Those using the word black were: Black Bottom (3), Black Belt (2), and Blacktown (1). The geographic aspects of this are as one would expect: names using the specific nigger were concentrated in the South Atlantic and Southeastern states and west to Texas; they diminish as one goes north and west, and we received no responses using this specific from New England, the Northwest, or the West Coast. The occasions for its use there are fewer, and our evidence shows that the term is now avoided by whites who know it is considered insulting by Blacks — except when Blacks use it among themselves, where it may be said in friendly joking without being taken as offensive.

Do any of these nicknames for sections of towns or cities pattern geographically? The answer is definitely yes. To mention only the most striking, the Nob Hill type, for obvious historical reasons, is strong in California and Oregon; otherwise it was found chiefly in the North and North Midland regions, hardly on the Atlantic Coast or Gulf states. On the other hand, the Snob Hill type, of the same frequency, is spread more generally except in the Inner South. The Mortgage Hill type is found, in contrast, especially on the Atlantic Coast and in the North, with no instances at all from California or the Southwest. Could this be significant? Don’t they know what mortgages are? The Silk-Stocking Row type is also clearly regional, being concentrated in the Southeast and Mississippi Valley, and hardly found at all in the Pacific states. That it is a rather older term is confirmed by the fact that responses came preponderantly from old informants (35 old, 18 middle-aged, 3 young). The informants’ education may have brought the term to them, as a fairly large proportion were college educated. At any rate, while not obsolescent, the Silk Stocking names appear to be somewhat old-fashioned. The Sugar Hill type is also quite distinctive but for a different reason: all six informants were from the Atlantic states, and all were Black.

In sum, then, nicknames can be real names. They can designate specific or single features such as the original Nob Hill in San Francisco; they can also become generalized and, like place-name generics, be applied wherever they seem to fit—like Snob Hill and most of the others we have dealt with. They may then attain the status of ordinary words, in which case one might hear a sentence like, “We’re developing quite a Millionaire’s Row up there.” Then the initial process of place-naming may begin all over with the definite article: “They live in the East End” or “on the North Side,” when both speaker and hearer already know what town or city is being spoken of.

It is also evident that these unofficial names can vary over the country at large both geographically and socially, in distinctive and sometimes significant patterns. Many show the popular imagination at work, with jocular and sometimes grotesque names, names that betray attitudes—amused, derisive, envious, sardonic, rejective. Public opinion expressed through adverse names may even act as a type of social pressure leading to change—not merely by euphemizing the name but by stirring public action to remove the conditions that produced the adverse name. In such cases, nicknames given as an emotional safety-valve become a lever to produce change.

Simon Says

Martin Panzer, New York, New York

John Simon, gentle critic of drama and language, offers the world the following examples of the latter:

The screenplay has two layers, both bad, but even less together than the sum of the parts.—Esquire.

Amusingly for me, they had widely divergent attitudes toward corrections in their copy.—Esquire.

. . . there are those to whom “whom” is sacred, and those who have forgotten that they ever heard it, if indeed they did.—Esquire.

Nor, most importantly, is this image in good moral taste. . . .—Esquire.

Just because some people are too thickheaded to grasp, for example, that anyone is singular, as the one in it plainly denotes, does not mean that the rest of us must put up with “anyone can do as they please.”—Esquire.

How nice it was at the recent Pula Film Festival, in Yugoslavia, between looking at films, to find etc.—Esquire.

The discussion profited from the fact that everyone spoke English well enough to be able to convey that his dislike, regardless of its country of origin, was very nearly identical with the other fellow’s. —Esquire.

… it would mean having to translate only into one other language … —Esquire.

My very title, “Assent for Tribute,” (a pun on “Millions for defense but not a cent for tribute”) should have been a warning. . . .—Esquire. [The commonly quoted version is “not one cent for tribute” but what Pinckney actually said was “not a damned penny for tribute.”—M.P.]

From what I have read by him and heard him say, etc. . . .—Esquire.

The term “functional illiterate” means that although you [sic] can technically [sic] read or write, you [sic] cannot do it well enough to be a fully functioning member of our society.—Esquire

Here let me interrupt to identify the script-writers. The chief one was Mark Peploe, younger brother of Antonioni’s former girl friend, Clare, who had contributed to the wretched script of Zabriskie Point.—Esquire. [Who contributed to the wretched script? Perhaps Clare?—M.P.]

When Rachel and the police arrive, the latter [in unison, no doubt.—M.P.] ask both women whether they know the dead man.—Esquire. [How many of us know dead men, by the way?—M.P.]

Simple and Direct is a book that, taken to heart and mind, might actually teach [as opposed to mythically teach?—M.P.] people how to write correct English. [As opposed to write English correctly? —M.P.] . . . For many years [Barzun] taught at Columbia, where he was at various times dean, provost, and university professor. . . .—Esquire. [One will get you ten that at NO time was Barzun dean, provost, and university professor, though there were times when he was one or another.—M.P.]

Whom’s kidding who?

SIC! SIC! SIC!

Sign in a shop window: OPEN SOON / DEATH IN FAMILY / PROBABLY MONDAY. [Submitted by Philip Slawsky, M.D., Plymouth, Massachusetts.]

How to Agglutinate

Robert Devereux, Falls Church, Virginia

Because agglutination is not a feature of the English language, few English speakers except those with a linguistic background of some sort are probably even acquainted with the word. And if by chance the word is in their recognition vocabulary, they probably do not know precisely what it means. That being the case, the writer believes it would be appropriate, before proceeding further, to give a definition of the term, taken from the Random House Dictionary of the English Language (cited hereafter as RHD):

A process of word formation in which morphemes, each having one relatively constant shape, are combined without fusion or morphophonemic change, and in which each grammatical category is typically represented by a single morpheme in the resulting word, esp. such a process involving the addition of one or more affixes to a base, as in Turkish, in which ev means “house,” ev-den means “from a house” and ev-ler-den means “from houses.”

It is hardly by coincidence that the RHD definition of agglutination employs an example drawn from Turkish, for of all the major languages of today’s world, there is none (except, perhaps, for the related Finnish) that utilizes agglutination to a greater degree. The examples given in the RHD definition, however, do not begin to illustrate the complexities of agglutination or the extent to which it can be carried. A better and more informative example, albeit one much too complex for use in a dictionary, would be the Turkish word muvaffakiyetsizliklerimizdendirki—a 33-letter word built up through agglutination from an 8-letter root by the addition of eight separate and successive affixes, as follows:

muvaffak ‘successful’

muvaffakiyet ‘success’ The affix iyet, which the Turks have borrowed from Persian, is used to make an abstract noun from an adjective that is Persian or Arabic in origin. Muvaffak, for example, is the Turkish version of the Arabic mawaffaq.

muvaffakiyetsiz ‘unsuccessful’ As an affix, siz means ‘without’ or ‘lack of,’ hence the meaning here of ‘unsuccessful’ or, literally, “without success.

muvaffakiyetsizlik ‘failure, or unsuccessfulness’ Like iyet, lik is used, among other things, to make an abstract noun out of an adjective. But whereas iyet is used with words borrowed from Persian and Arabic, lik is used when the adjective is strictly Turkish in origin or ends in a Turkish morpheme (siz in this case).

muvaffakiyetsizlikler ‘failures’ As indicated in the RHD definition, ler is the Turkish pluralizing affix.

muvaffakiyetsizliklerimiz ‘our failures’ The affix imiz denotes the first person plural possessive.

muvaffakiyetsizliklerimizden ‘because of our failures’ As indicated in the RHD definition, den is the Turkish ablative case ending. Although its literal meaning is ‘from,’ it is frequently best rendered into English as ‘because of.’

muvaffakiyetsizliklerimizdendir ‘It is because of our failures’ Although the affix dir has several different usages (see below), in this context it serves as the copula.

muvaffakiyetsizliklerimizdendirki ‘It is because of our failures that … A finite verb form is normally the last element of a Turkish sentence, in this case the copula dir. However, the affix ki, here meaning ‘that,’ can be added to allow the sentence to be continued with another clause.

Admittedly, very few Turkish speakers probably ever have occasion to say “It is because of our failures that . . .”; but when they do, they will use the 33-letter word cited above and will do so without having to stop and think about what affixes to use or in what order.

In Turkish, agglutination is used to build up verbs as well as nouns and adjectives. A good example is the verb form sevişdirilemediklerinden, which, as some anonymous wit is reputed to have once remarked, succinctly and accurately sums up the cause of the Crimean War. The word, 24 letters in length, represents the addition of eight affixes to a 3-letter base, as follows:

sev ‘to love’ Sev is the root of sevmek, to love. All Turkish infinitives end in mek or mak, depending on vowel harmony; this ending is dropped before any verbal tense endings are added. (It might be worth noting that there are no irregular verbs in Turkish, the only language I know of about which that statement can be made.)

seviş ‘to love each other’ As an affix, is makes a verb reflexive.

sevişdir ‘to cause to love each other’ When used as part of a verb, the affix dir makes the verb causative.

sevişdiril ‘to be made to love each other’ As a verbal affix, il makes a verb passive.

sevişdirile ‘to be able to be made to love each other’ In Turkish, the affix ebil(mek) or abil(mek), depending on vowel harmony, can be added to any verb root to make the verb’s potential (or abilitative) form. If the verb is negative, as in this case, the bil(mek) is dropped and only the e or a is retained.

sevişdirileme ‘not to be able to be made to love each other’ Me is the verbal negating affix.

sevişdirilemedikleri ‘they were not able to be made to love each other’ Dikleri is a third person plural nonfinite verb ending. (Turkish, unlike English, includes a large number of nonfinite verb forms that depend on and are governed by a finite form, which, as noted above, is usually the last word in a Turkish sentence.)

sevişdirilemediklerin ‘they were not able to be made to love each other’ The affix n, which is also used in agglutinated noun forms, has no meaning and is used, for the sake of euphony, as a glide between an affix ending in i and a following affix beginning with a consonant.

sevişdirilemediklerinden ‘because of their not having been able to be made to love each other’ As noted above, the affix den is the ablative case ending meaning ‘from’ or, at times, ‘because of.’

As in the case of muvaffakiyetsizliklerimizdendirki, the eight affixes used in sevişdirilemediklerinden follow each other in natural order, and no one familiar with Turkish grammar and structure would have the slightest doubt about the order in which they should be used. The agglutinative process used in both examples may seem hopelessly complex to the uninitiated; but as the writer can testify, once a student learns basic Turkish grammar, the host of available agglutinative affixes and the sequences in which they can and have to be used cease to appear complex and become quite understandable and eminently logical — so logical, in fact, that even Mr. Spock of Star Trek would approve.

Master Malaprop

James W. Higgins, Evans Mills, New York

The diminutive, energetic man who managed our newspaper for many years was a Master Malaprop. I expect never to know his equal.

Charging forward boldly on some new advertising scheme, he shouted, “This plan needs a lot of hallybooing!” So we created the hullabaloo he demanded.

Showing his new office to a friend he said proudly, “I’ve got what I always wanted—an office with rug-to-rug walls.”

On his way through the city room, he stopped by the desk of the obituary writer. “Well, John,” he asked, “any serious deaths today?”

He was dedicated to his work and more so to his employer. “This is a great place to work,” he said. “Working here is just like Ethiopia to me.” Utopia obviously came in second.

Fond of clichés, he mixed them with enormous relish and enthusiasm. When the merchant bought only one ad and not the several he’d recommended, he smiled and proclaimed, “A hand in the bush is worth two.”

His quest for advertising took him often to New York, where he spread his blizzard of words and unwords over all. Going to Chinatown for dinner and unable to find a taxi in the rain, he suggested his companion find “a Chinese rickashay.” Upon his return, he once told us of an elevator encounter with the late Jim Parley. “We exchanged the breeze of the day,” he said proudly.

“How far is it from here to New York?” someone asked him. “Oh, about 300 miles,” he said. “That’s by road. It’s only about 250 by crow.”

He was impatient with those who had trouble interpreting his words. “That dummy!” he said of an employee. “Whatever you tell him goes in one head and out the other!”

Now he’s gone, and we remember one of his gems, shared with us in his late years. His picture appeared in the paper. He gazed at it and said soberly, “I used to take a good picture, but now I look like a dead skeleton.”

EPISTOLA {Katharine S. Teetor}

All Good Things Come to (from?) an End

Purchasers of bottled spirits know of “Cold Duck.” This pinkish-red wine, in its finer varieties, is a mixture of champagne and burgundy; users will detect additional ingredients in lesser brands. It is an American beverage.

Where did it get that name?

Suggestion: From the convivial language of German restaurant and party lore. The hired help at the end of a festivity, as is the global custom, combined all liquid remnants from glasses and bottles for their own use. They thus refreshed their tired souls and called it kalte Ende. This was the “cold end” of the party.

Touring Americans, unwilling to be so gauche as to make a literal translation and searching their minimal German vocabularies, termed it kalte Ente. The German word for ‘duck’ is Ente. “Cold Duck” was hatched.

Closing note: The German noun die Zeitungsente refers to a newspaper hoax, a canard.

[Katharine S. Teetor, Washington, D.C.]

Phobia Foibles

Albert Bender, Dumont, New Jersey

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt said at his 1933 inauguration, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he was admonishing America against “phobophobia,” or, the fear of being afraid. Unfortunately for me, I was not around on that March day, for had I been, I could have saved myself some confusion. You see, it was not until some years later that I first heard about “phobophobia,” but, I confess, I thought it meant fear of stuttering. Suddenly it occurred to me that many of the names of our many phobias could cause as many problems as the actual phobias themselves. Certainly we’ve all heard of claustrophobia (fear of Santa?) or hydrophobia (fear of fireplugs?), but what about others perhaps less known but equally confusing? I give you the following examples:

NAME	ACTUAL FEAR	MIGHT BE MISTAKEN FOR
bibliophobia	books	fear of term papers
bathophobia	depth	fear of being clean
Gallophobia	France, things French	fear of California wine
crystallophobia	glass	fear of Gypsies
cryophobia	ice, frost	fear of peeling onions
polyphobia	many things	fear of parrots
phonophobia	noise, loud talking	fear of stereos
topophobia	places	fear of Italian mice
aichurophobia	points	fear of sneezing
belonophobia	sharp objects	fear of cold cuts
halophobia	speaking	fear of angels
tacophobia	speed	fear of Mexican food
phagophobia	swallowing	fear of becoming a sissy
haphephobia	touching, being touched	fear of fractions
Hodophobia	travel	fear of hobbits
Parthenophobia	young girls	fear of Greek temples

. . . But the list doesn’t stop here. Somewhere deep within the dark abyss of the human unconscious are yet unnamed fears pleading for an identity. That, however, we must leave to the psychoanalysts who, perhaps inadvertently, have compounded our fears with confusion. And speaking of confusion, I leave it to your imagination to figure out the meaning of spermophobia, gynophobia, and dikephobia. Now do you think I would leave you perplexed as to the true identity of these actual fears? I’m afraid so.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Although the birds of Hawaii are said to be among those hardest hit by extinction . . . ”—The New York Times, December 25, 1979. [Submitted by H. W. Janson, New York University.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“WARNING: Joggers be alert for those persons participating in other activities such as basketball, volleyball, tennis, and badminton while using the running track.”—Sign in the athletic fieldhouse of the University of Bridgeport. [Submitted by Bryan Miller, Chester, Connecticut.]

Antipodean English: Socko Names

George W. Turner

‘How did you sleep?’ my son, returning to Australia after eight years in Britain, asked a fellow passenger who had shared his inexpensive hotel in Sydney. ‘Took a couple of trankos and went right out’ was the reply. It was the word trankos that brought the flavour of Australia rushing back. It is what Sidney Baker (The Australian Language) calls a hypocorism, a form ending in -ie, -y, or -ey, or (especially in Australia) -o, to make diminutives or pet forms. In England such forms are associated with children’s language (nursie, potty), but such forms are not always or in all languages childish. Latin developing into the modern Romance languages acquired many diminutives, and Russians, Italians, or Swiss Germans, as well as Australians, use diminutives more freely than the English do.

Potentially any word might take an -ie or -o or be shortened. It is difficult to generalize a separate meaning in Australian English for each of the three possibilities. Perhaps -ie is more truly diminutive than -o, representing standard English unstressed ‘little’ rather than similarly unstressed ‘old,’ so that if there were a word *trankie it would be ‘the little tranquillizer’ while tranko is ‘the old tranquillizer,’ both expressing affection. A possible shortened *trank would mean much the same, perhaps emphasizing familiarity more than anything else.

In fact *trankie and *trank do not to my knowledge exist, and I have encountered tranko only in this one instance. But when hypocorisms become established they sometimes show all these forms (Com, Commie and Commo all gain entry to the Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary as colloquial variants of Communist). But more often the -ie or -o form exists alone. Schoolie ‘teacher,’ barbie ‘barbecue,’ brekkie ‘breakfast,’ greenie ‘large wave,’ or trannie ‘transistor radio’ appear to have no -o variants. Neither does Pommy ‘Englishman,’ though the shortened Pom is common. Sometimes one or another of two coexistent forms becomes established in a set phrase as Pommy bastard but whingeing Pom ‘English migrant who complains about Australia.’

The existence of one form rather than another appears to be unpredictable, a matter for the particularity of dictionaries rather than the generality of grammar books. A Presbyterian may appear as a Presbo or a Pressie, not, it seems, a *Presbie or *Presso. A member of the Salvation Army may be a Salvo or a Sallie but not *Salvie or *Sallo. Some words have -o alone; arvo ‘afternoon’ and nasho ‘national service, compulsory military training’ are examples of this. Again we might take a perfectly good Scottish diminutive chuckie ‘fowl’ and abandon it in favour of the shorter chook. Sometimes there are regional variants, as Western Victorian blockie and South Australian blacker ‘occupier of small fruit farm,’ or premie ‘premature baby,’ which I always heard as prem in New Zealand.

There is an unpredictable element in pronunciation as well. Chrissie ‘Christmas’ is pronounced with [s] but possie ‘(comfortable) position’ with [z]. Similarly Tassie ‘Tasmania’ and Brissie ‘Brisbane’ have pronunciation with [z]. This could suggest that these words are simply formed on the spoken full forms, which are pronounced with [z], but this would not explain the [z] pronunciation in Aussie ‘Australia(n)’ or * mossie* ‘mosquito.’

Besides phonetic and morphological arbitrariness, there is an unpredictable element in the semantics of hypocoristic forms, at least in Australia. A clippie is a female bus-conductor but a connie, with otherwise the same meaning, need not be female. The -ie termination often suggests endearment as in coldie ‘bottle of cold beer’ or sickie ‘period of sick leave,’ but it occurs in blowie ‘blowfly’ (as well as mossie). And if it occurs in sickie, why not in compo ‘(worker’s) compensation’? There may be a phonetic explanation: it would have been difficult to pronounce an -o termination in chewie ‘chewing gum’ for instance, and this may explain the formation of blowie. Sometimes etymology (and even spelling) determines a form, as in speedo, Abo, choco ‘conscript’ (from chocolate soldier), or uni ‘university.’ Terms like smoko ‘a break for a cup of tea’ and fleeco ‘one who picks up fleeces in a woolshed’ arise from calls such as ‘Fleece oh!.’

Why do manly Australians (for we are talking especially of male language in this) promote diminutives? Perhaps what all hypocoristic forms have in common is an atmosphere of familiarity. They reduce things to size. Violet’s father in Arnold Bennett’s novel Imperial Palace referred to the overpowering hotel of the title as the ‘pally’ in order to maintain his self-respect. So nasho and even the rather official compo and the early pejorative reffo ‘refugee’ show a desire to acclimatize the unfamiliar, not to be impressed, to cut down tall poppies. But familiarity is also a warm thing and to shorten place names—Darlo ‘Darlington,’ Paddo ‘Paddington’ (these two are Sydney suburbs) or the Gabba ‘Woolloongabba’—makes them sound like home. Perhaps we need hypocorisms in a new country.

EPISTOLA {Sherri Tuck}

A growing trend in the Boston area is to create new nouns by attaching the suffix -works to an already existing noun in order to create a name for a commercial enterprise. Traditionally the few compounds formed in this way referred to the manufacturing place of a product (ironworks, gasworks, silkworks). The idea of a place of construction is maintained, literally, in Photoworks, a film developer; Frameworks, a do-it-yourself picture framing store; and Bedworks, a manufacturer of platform beds. Construction is figurative in Danceworks, a dance studio, and Healthworks, a natural foods shop. Hairworks, however, is not a place where hair is manufactured but a unisex beauty salon, and at Griefworks, a therapy group for the separated and divorced, the product in question not only will not be produced, but will (ideally) be broken down.

If these examples signal a wave of compounds that is to come, in the future we can make deposits and cash checks at Moneyworks and take our flabby bodies to be exercised at Fatworks. Those in need of more basic services can avail themselves of Sexworks. Even the cynic who scorns the influx of help readily available will ultimately confront the last enemy and require the conventional amenities, courtesy of Deathworks.

[Sherri Tuck, Cambridge, Massachusetts]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“In fact, and this is just a guess, one would be tempted to say that . . .”—Music review in The Ann Arbor News, May 8, 1979. [Submitted by Bert G. Hornback.]

Philip Howard on English English

Hyperbole

We all exaggerate some of the time, to attract attention. The temptation to vivify the tale and make it walk abroad on its own legs is hard to deny.’ Brits, in their odiously patronizing way, tend to think of hyperbole, effusiveness, and fulsomeness as peculiarly American vices. And it is true that for an inhibited Englishman to be greeted and first-named like a long-lost prodigal son by an American he has never set eyes on before can be overwhelming. It shows that Americans are friendlier, less up-tight, more laid back than we are. But what enthusiasms and endearments are left when he really does meet his long-lost prodigal son or some other intimate friend? Exaggeration weakens rather than strengthens. ‘How d’you do’ or ‘I am pleased to meet you’ sounds more sincere (to a Brit, at any rate) than bouquets of ‘greatests’ and other superlatives.

And of course the reserved British also exaggerate in their own way, particularly in such attention-grabbing activities as radio and television. Most radio and television are pretty boring about boring subjects. Give me even a middling book every time. If the commentator cannot din it into his audience that what they are listening to or watching really is the greatest, their attention might wander. They might even take the dreadful step and switch off. So fatuous superlatives flow from the silly box.

They recently had this Horse of the Year show in London, in which the best horses in the world are compelled by the most arrogant riders in the world to jump over walls and other obstacles in competition with each other. I can hardly tell one end of a horse from another, and distrust them both. And I agree with whoever it was who said that they are the most stupid and stubborn of domestic animals. However, they have my sympathy during their show.

There is a very true blue and pukka British centaur called Dorian Williams who always commentates on horse-tests. Before I could turn the rubbish off the other night he had said: ‘The courses are brilliantly designed.’ Well, of course they weren’t. They were the customary arrangements of painted poles and gates and brushwood. Maybe they were well designed. It would have been more informative if Williams had said that they were cunningly designed, or cleverly designed, or differently designed. ‘Brilliant,’ ‘fantastic,’ ‘magnificent,’ and the rest of the media hyperbolics are as deleterious as swear-words in crowding out adjectives and adverbs that really tell us something.

The football people are rather better in this respect, I fancy. During this year’s Football Association Cup semi-finals we heard of one match that ‘it’s got drama, passion, incident—everything else.’ Nonsense, but funny nonsense.

While we are on about superlatives, I have to report a vogue for using most in a new way on this side of the Atlantic. It was originally used as a superlative to mean greatest in amount, quality, or extent (and so on). Today it is being increasingly used to mean no more than very.

Here is the opening of a recent letter to The Times from a member of the House of Lords: ‘Mr. X’s MOST interesting article on the relations between Ministers and the Civil Service raises several issues, also referred to by Sir Geoffrey Howe in a speech reported on your front page. The one which is MOST interesting concerns Civil Service privilege.’ I do not wish to be beastly to a Peer, particularly, but it is the most glaring example available. Just how many interesting articles did Mr. X publish on that day? I presume (and know) that it was only one. On the other hand, how many interesting issues did he raise? I guess that in fact it was at least three.

‘This is a MOST beautiful part of the world.’ ‘On diagnostic problems there is a MOST fruitful integration between Institute and Hospital.’ Apart from their intrinsic improbability, the indefinite article makes such statements manifestly absurd. One is not surprised that the abominable American double superlative mostest is gaining ground. Where will it all end? When everyone’s a superlative, then no-one’s anybody.

I report a sudden vogue in BritEnglish for using that’s right as a noise of assent or encouragement, where old-fashioned Oxbridge academics say quite so. Everybody is suddenly saying it. That’s right. How about on your side of the Atlantic?

The Strong Sex

Harry Cohen, Brussels, Belgium

I could not help feeling a bit disappointed after reading Gary Shroat’s letter [VI, 4] on the observation that a sexual or a scatological connotation of any word drives all other connotations out of circulation. Whilst claiming that evidence of this tendency abounds in the English language, he provides us with just three examples (only two of which have real demonstrative value), followed by the suggestion that we trace the rest and present it to him. Further, he wonders whether any similar phenomenon occurs in any language besides English.

My answer is that the facts described simply are occurrences of an ongoing, universal process that can be witnessed in the language of any society where sex is or recently was relegated to the taboo sphere. Playboy’s party jokes would never exist without it. And I shall never forget the British editor in a UN agency who, after having perused the first paper I ever drafted in English, kindly suggested replacing seduce by induce, although she did admit that the former would be semantically more correct in the given context. The argument was settled on our agreement that I, as a foreigner, would be forgiven anyway. She did, however, insist on my changing the title of another document which was “The High Commissioner’s Briefs.” Since then, I have also learnt to be more cautious in conversation when using apparently harmless words like queer, wanton, knockers, erection, and lubricious, not to speak of intercourse. Even it can sound quite ambiguous if you manage to put it in the wrong place.

However circumspect you are, you can’t always win. Between interlocutors of different social or cultural levels, something is bound to go wrong, linguistically. In some circles, I have been misunderstood when using vocables whose more general meaning had precedence, I believed, such as moral, molest, decent, or rubber, I have even come across people who only realized after some discussion that terms like pill or climax have full currency outside the sexual sphere. And then there are those who consider sex itself an improper word, and therefore rather refer to gender, held to be more genteel.

Strictly speaking, genteelisms and euphemisms may not be part of the phenomenon pointed to in Shroat’s letter, but the connotational problems they create are closely related to it, especially for foreigners. It’s not so difficult to find out what your British date is really heading for when she says she is going to spend a penny, but it does require experience to foreknow that your hostess, when you accept her offer to let you wash your hands, will usher you into a facility where the hand-washing equipment, if any, is clearly a secondary part of the outfit. I have also gone through a sufficient number of misunderstandings to conclude that a Britisher’s stomachache may be located in any part of the ventral cavity at large, and that any coincidence with gastric pains is purely accidental. And I shall always remember my bewilderment when the American lady with whom I hiked through the New Hampshire wilderness—not a building in sight between us and the horizon—asked me to stop for a few minutes because her poodle had to go to the bathroom.

So much for English. I could of course quote many more examples from my mother tongue (Dutch), but I think I had better refrain from doing so because the explanations required for English readers would turn out rather tiresome. Just one case: The noun preservatief ‘preservative’ has gone in Holland the same way as Shroat’s prophylactic, only more so. The general meaning of the word is virtually unknown outside the world of pharmacology and medicine.

However, since I have been living in Belgium for some time, I can provide you with a few French treasures whose background may be more easily accessible to an English-language readership. The most disastrous faux pas a foreigner probably can commit is connected with the verb baiser. According to your always helpful dictionary, it is the equivalent of ‘to kiss.’ Well, forget it. Never, never use it in that sense when the direct object is a person, nor as an intransitive. You may baiser somebody’s hand or forehead, the Pope’s ring or toe, nor is there any risk in using the word as a noun, but that is strictly all if you don’t want to be misunderstood—grossly! It is perhaps worth knowing that the now normal connotation of baiser has begotten a subconnotation which means ‘to cheat.’ This lineage will easily come to your mind, should you ever feel “screwed” by a French-speaking person.

Much less intricate is the case of verge. It really means ‘rod’ or ‘wand,’ but since it has been formally adopted as the non-Latin medical term for the most characteristic part of human male anatomy, you can’t pronounce it any more without provoking a snicker. It’s much the same for bite or bitte, which originally designated a ‘bollard.’ Nowadays, it has so much become the vulgar equivalent of verge that its nautical meaning is reduced to the status of, well … a connotation. A third synonym, membre ‘member,’ is a tricky case because it takes the dreaded connotation only under special grammatical conditions. You may freely comment on the physiological qualities of a man’s membres. The audience would have no doubt that you are referring to his limbs, and there is nothing singular about that. But watch out when you use the word in singular. I understand English speakers are familiar with the problem.

Of course, here like everywhere, some quarters of society are more open-minded or literate than others. I once met a Belgian girl who was forbidden at home to utter the word pudeur ‘shame’ because it could be construed as a genteelism for ‘genitals.’ But that was twenty years ago. In those days, we also had the diverting problem of that Russian movie whose title meant ‘When the Cranes Go By.’ The literal translation would have been “Quand passent les grues,” but the secondary meaning of grue, i.e. ‘street-walker,’ was feared to produce a ludicrous effect. The desperate film distributor finally opted for “Quand passent les cigognes” ‘When the Storks Go By.’

Let me end on a translingual case. In the early fifties, the English expression to make love had a rather innocent sound to most ears. It was maybe debatable which precise grade of petting the average speaker had in mind, but the phrase was considered inoffensive enough to fit the title of a Marilyn Monroe movie, even in those times of great public chastity. Well, things seem to have evolved since. If I got my connotations right, the most daring one of those days has now become the primary, if not the sole meaning. The interesting thing is that the French equivalent, faire l’amour, has invariably and exclusively meant just that, all the century along. Conversely, the Italian counterpart, fare l’amore, has a softer core, originally at least (it seems to be picking up fast now). Until recently, it was mostly used in the sense of ‘to court’ or ‘to woo.’ A few years ago still, in the Naples countryside, I met people who even applied it without any bodily of emotional implications. To them, it just stood for ‘to be engaged to marry.’

I am grateful to Gary Shroat for having provided the opportunity for publishing this material. I suggest that the point he made be subsumed under the more general linguistic phenomenon that unfavourable connotations tend to drive out favourable ones. As he says, it’s an analogue to Gresham’s Law, which states that bad money drives out good money. The sad consequence, however, would be that all sexual connotations would then automatically be classified under the baddies. Don’t you think sex is far too good for that?

Funnin' Games

Some time ago—the clipping I have bears no date—Barry Norman wrote an article for The Sunday Times¹ in which he accused Bernard Levin of a nefarious bit of treachery. Levin (or so claimed Norman) enquired in a letter “Have we had that Swedish assassin Dag Ersdrorn?”

Norman reports that he and Levin were introduced to the game “by one Julian Holland, who now masquerades as an editor on ‘The World at One’ . . . [and] who, one day, mentioned a mythical American called Phil D. Basket who used to exhort New Yorkers to throw their litter into bins. . . .” It is at once apparent that Norman was engaging in that well-known journalistic ploy of “crediting” others for one’s own shortcomings: uncertain of how the game might be received, Norman passed the blame for originating it on-to two colleagues; then, realizing that he might be caught out and become the object of their revenge, laid the entire matter at the door of the Americans.

Readers of The New York Times, inured to computer-generated hyphenating procedures that yield end-of-line breaks that produce items like the-rapist (for therapist), whether New Yorkers or not, can readily (if not willingly) absorb responsibility for something as tame as Phil D. Basket. A culture that can produce ecdysiasts named Candy Barr and Terna Klozoff should be able to cope with the likes of Mustapha Phix, the Turkish drug addict; a society that can name its children Ima Hogg and can spawn authors like Seymour Haire (The Open Kimono) and I. P. Dailey (The Yellow Stream) should have no trouble coping with Norman’s British folk personalities like Bertha D. Blews (the jazz singer), Rudy Day (a regretful husband), and Lottie Cairs (his neglected wife). Other possibilities are mentioned by Norman—Beau Neidel, the lazy German fop, E. C. Vertue, Norman’s favorite madam (by his own admission), and Fay Slifter, the plastic surgeon—but he neglects the well-known meteorologist. Farthingale (never seen without his windbreaker), the naval architect. Billy Band, and the headmistress of a famous finishing school, R. U. Dunn. He ignored the well-known choreographer, Les Dantz, the female fire-prevention expert, Stepania Butts, the voyeur, S. lan Yaneckett, the art-gallery owner. Sawyer Pitcher, and the arboretum manager, Lyman Oakes. Then there are institutions in New York, like the sperm bank for sailors (The Seamen’s Bank for Savings), IBM (called “One Bee Em” by some), and—well, readers should be able to supply other examples.

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SIC! SIC! SIC!

The Boulevard Inn, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, offers “a thoughtful vegetarian plate.” [From Reinhold Aman, Waukesha, Wisconsin, who wonders. What would be a thoughtless one? A dish with a hunk of meat? or telling the customer, “The wurst is yet to come!”?]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

On West George Street, in Glasgow, stands a pub, The Muscular Arms.

Fanguage

Greg Costikyan, Providence, Rhode Island

In the 1930s, writers of letters to the science fiction pulp magazines began to meet each other and form clubs and groups of science fiction fans. Many of these groups became quite tightly knit, and science fiction fandom became a genuine subculture all its own. Today, that sub-culture continues and grows; while some fans are only occasional fans, others see fandom as the core of their life. They work as necessary to bring in the green, but most of their interest and activity is involved in the production of fanzine, the attendance of conventions, and the like. Over the years, fandom has developed a jargon and idiom of its own, which has been partially coopted by other “fannish” groups such as Trekkies, wargamers. Rocky Horror freaks, and Creative Anachronists.

Although the word fan is in general usage outside fandom, for fen (plural of fan) it has a specific meaning. A fan is ‘a member of that community known as fandom.’ Mundane is the opposite of fannish; while one’s fannish persona is Yang the Nauseating, founder of the Dark Horde, one’s mundane persona may be Robert Asprin. In noun form, a mundane is ‘a non-fan.’ A trufan is ‘a true-blue, dyed-in- the-wool fan’; a fringefan is ‘one whose main interest in fandom lies elsewhere than in science fiction’—examples are Trekkies and wargamers. A neofan is ‘one making a debut into fandom’; a BNF (Big Name Fan) is ‘the opposite of a LNF (Little Known Fan,’ and I’m aware the acronym doesn’t work). A pro usually preceded by the adjective filthy, as in filthy pro) is ‘a professional science fiction writer’; a one-time pro is ‘a writer who has had only one story published’ (and is stereotypically thirsty for the supposed glories of professional status).

BNFs spend most of their time drinking bheer (anything is more fannish if an “h” is inserted before its first vowel; Ghod is another example). They also smof a lot. Smof is an acronym for secret master of fandom and was originally coined to describe those who had grandiose dreams of “taking over fandom”; I have no idea how the noun was transmuted to a verb.

Much of the fannish vocabulary deals with printing and the publication of fanzines. Fanzine is one of the few fannish words that has passed into general use; as originally coined, it meant ‘any fannish publication which was published for egoboo (‘a boost to the ego’) and not profit.’ As it is used in the mundane world, it means ‘any magazine that enthusiastically supports a famous figure.’ Thus, screen magazines are, according to Bill Safire, fanzines; according to fans, they are definitely mundane magazines and anything but fanzines. Fans preserve the distinction between mimeo and ditto, which has been lost in general usage. Mimeography is what produces the black printing of army orders or cheap political flyers; ditto reproduction produces the purple printing used on high school tests and the like. In the mundane world, both processes are now known as “mimeography.”

Another term used in relation to publishing is corflu, a contraction for the correction fluid used for mimeograph stencils. Bad liquor is sometimes likened to “strained corflu”; according to fannish tradition, it is possible to make a potable alcoholic drink by straining corflu, although I have yet to meet anyone who actually claims to have done so. Fanac is a contraction for ‘fannish activity’ and includes attending conventions, contributing to fanzines, and the like. A loc is a letter of comment; a poc is a postcard of comment. Many fanzines are available only to those who write locs or articles or send other fanzines in trade; despite the fact that many fen are objectivists or libertarians, fen have a traditional horror of filthy lucre and will generally ignore monetary considerations where fellow fen are concerned. Nexish means ‘next issue,’ and lastish means ‘last issue.’

Conventions are also an area for which many fannish terms have been developed. A convention is a con, a term having no relation to confidence men; most conventions have names like WorldCon, PhilCon, DenVention, and the like. A relaxicon has few programming items and is mostly ‘a fannish get-together.’ A GOH is the Guest of Honor at the convention. A con party is ‘a party at a convention run either by the committee running the convention or by another committee which is bidding to run the World Science Fiction Convention at some point in the future. A dead dog party is ‘a party after the end of the con, where everybody lies around like the aforenamed animal.’ Fannish songs are filksongs, and a group of people singing such are filksinging. (The term probably originated as a typographical error.) The hucksters’ room is ‘the convention area where dealers in books and science fiction paraphernalia are rented tables where they may vend their wares.’

Fans often swear by Ghu, Jones, Crom, Cthulhu, and the Great Ghod Gestetner. A fan who drops out of fandom is said to have gafiated (gafia being an acronym for get away from it all). In diplomacy fandom, ‘one who drops out of the hobby without returning subscription money to his subscribers’ is a burn out and has rotated (an acronym for run off to Argentina). The abbreviation for science fiction is sf (usually spelled with lower-case letters) and never “sci fi.” “Sci fi” is a term used to describe bad Hollywood science fiction movies, trashy science fiction novels, and bad science fiction written by mundane writers. (Jacqueline Susann’s Yargo is sci fi.) ST is the abbreviation for Star Trek (usually spelled with capitals); Trekkies are ‘star-struck ST fans who run around in Starfleet uniforms wearing plastic Spock ears,’ while Trekkers are ‘more serious Star Trek fen.’ To a trufan, however, all ST fen are Trekkies, and probably moronic scum.

Crottled greeps are ‘a fannish food’; there is a difference of opinion as to whether crottled greeps taste like nectar or something more earthly. In any case, the usual response to an inquiry as to the nature of crottled greeps is “If you do not enjoy them, do not order them.” I am informed by educated opinion that Szechwan sea slugs taste very much like crottled greeps.

A faan (pronounced FAYAN) is ‘an overly enthusiastic fan,’ and needs to gain some fannish savoir faire. A slan is *a fannish superman' (the term derives from A. E. Van Vogt’s novel of the same name); “He’s a slan” is the fannish equivalent of “He’s a helluva guy.”

In the wargaming hobby, a grognard is ‘a hard-core gamer, one who purchases a dozen or more games a year’; the term originally mean ‘a member of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard.’ Chrome consists of ‘rules and game-systems added to lend historical color to a game, rather than to fulfill a needed function.’ An FRP is ‘a fantasy role-playing game such as DUNGEONS & DRAGONS’; an RPG is a more general term for ‘role-playing games.’ Conflict simulations is a more general and less controversial term for ‘wargames’; it is also more accurate, if awkward, since many “wargames” are simulations of diplomatic or economic competition. Miniatures are ‘lead figures’; the conflict-simulations hobby divides into the three sectors of miniatures, boardgames, and RPG’s. A monster game is ‘a huge game with 24 square feet of board area or more, several thousand playing pieces, and very complex rules’; at the other end of the scale are microgames, which sell for $3-$6. Wargaming rules themselves use a complicated jargon including such terms as CRT (‘Combat Results Table’) and Line of Supply, but these are not really part of the fannish language. In any case, wargaming fandom is younger than sf fandom and has not had the time to develop as rich a language. Presumably, this will be rectified as time goes on.

In closing, may your pigs prosper; Live Long & Prosper; Nuke the Whales; Elen Sila Lumenn Omentielvo; and la, la, Cthulhu, R’lyeh Ftagn Nyarlathotep.

Paring Pairs No. 1

Each one of the following clues (a-x) refers to two of the words (1-49) listed below them. After matching them up, there will be one word left over; that is the “answer.” The first two correct solutions received in Essex and in Aylesbury will earn a subscription to VERBATIM-an extension, a renewal, a new subscription, or a gift. Send answers (on cards, please) to VERBATIM, Box 668, Essex, CT 06426, U.S.A., or to VERBATIM, 2 Market Square, Aylesbury, Bucks., England, whichever is closer. Two winners will be chosen at each office. Winners and answers will be announced in the next issue. (These puzzles are based on the Elimination Puzzles originally published by The Sunday Telegraph and copyright by them. They are used by permission.)

(a). Growing pile of rubbish.
(b). Sound metallically.
(c). Two connected with pipe.
(d). But not press cutting?
(e). Two cities.
(f). A book.
(g). Venus for Communists?
(h). Two suggesting baked.
(i). For a tiny professor?
(j). 16 oz. of silver
(k). Two synonyms.
(l). Two that are black.
(m). Having the opposite effect.
(n). Two suggesting mine.
(o). Where to teach the wealthy.
(p). Two with bone.
(q). A proverbial weapon?
(r). Two sauces.
(s). Two connected with blue.
(t). Wimbledon assizes?
(u). For Trojan gymnasts?
(v). Grammatical error?
(w). Two going with breaker.
(x). A novel.

1. Horse.
2. Gun.
3. Heap.
4. Clip.
5. Star.
6. Farm.
7. Clay.
8. Intercourse.
9. High.
10. Half.
11. Maxim.
12. Funny.
13. Ebony.
14. Drain.
15. Wooden.
16. Chair.
17. Beans.
18. Split.
19. Ice.
20. China.
21. Infinitive.
22. Pound.
23. Paper.
24. Cobalt.
25. Women.
26. Proper.
27. Animal.
28. Limpet.
29. School.
30. Copper.
31. Seemly.
32. Tabasco.
33. Counter.
34. Compost.
35. Bottle.
36. Sweeper.
37. Morning.
38. Private.
39. Tennis.
40. Bottomed.
41. Paris.
42. Sterling.
43. Court.
44. Worcestershire.
45. Anthracite.
46. Productive.
47. Tie.
48. Little.
49. Classical.

EPISTOLA {Mary M. Tius}

In Sterling Eisiminger’s interesting article, “Colorful Language” [VI, I], there appears the following: “A Turk who is saricizmeli ‘yellow’ is a nobody. …” The full expression in Turkish is saricizmeli Mehmet Aga, which, translated literally, means ‘yellow-booted Mr. Mehmet’ and, translated more freely, ‘John Doe,’ Mehmet being a very common name and yellow boots being equally common. In short, sari ‘yellow’ is the least important element in the phrase and comes into it only coincidentally. A truer translation of the expression might be, ‘Looking for yellow-booted Mr. Mehmet is like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

Elsewhere in his article, Mr. Eisiminger mentions that Turkish kizilbas means ‘red woman’ and is the equivalent of English scarlet woman. In this, he (or Messrs. Berlin and Kay) is surely mistaken. Kizilbas (literally, ‘red or ruddy head’) is defined in one dictionary as “a partisan of a wicked Moslem sect” and, in another, as “the name given to Shiite Moslems.” No meanings other than the literal ones are given in any of the five dictionaries in my possession nor have I ever heard the word used to refer to anyone but a member of the Moslem sect.

It might be interesting to note that in Greek, too, as well as in Russian, red and beautiful are nearly synonymous; that a gray-striped tiger—or tabby—cat is invariably described as black; that sour means ‘green or young.’ (Incidentally, langue verte ‘any tart response’ surely refers less to color than to the unripeness of fruit.)

Finally, it seems to me that the use of “yellow and yellow-bellied meaning ‘cowardly”’ stems from medieval medical theories: the liver was considered to be the seat of passion and desire; yellow bile, or choler, was one of the four humors (blood, phlegm, and black bile, or melancholy, being the other three) and was thought to be the cause of ill humor, a choleric temperament, or irritability. A white- livered person was a coward; diseases of the liver produce not merely jaundice but extreme depression, lassitude, and “lack of courage.”

[Mary M. Tius, Kavala, Greece]

EPISTOLA {W. M. Woods}

I refer to Sterling Eisiminger’s “Colorful Language” [VI, 1] and Charles N. Faeber’s letter [VI, 3] about the meaning redline in connection with military aircraft, specifically during WW II.

As so often happens, both are correct. The meaning of the term depends on the context. To refresh my understanding, I called three friends at Oak Ridge National Laboratory who had been in the Air Corps (now the Air Force) during WW II. Frank Rogers was Crew Chief on a B-24, stationed in England. He flew on missions and was responsible for his plane’s maintenance. Robert M. Farnham was Maintenance Officer with a bombardment squadron stationed in North Africa and then in Italy. Frank Harrington was a fighter pilot, first in England and then in France and Germany. They all confirmed my understanding.

In the context of maintenance: A diagonal red line in a particular square on the check sheet indicated that this item had something wrong, but that the plane was fit to fly with due precautions. There was no particular term for this sort of redline. “Give it a diagonal red line,” the Maintenance Officer might say.

However, in the context of actually flying a military plane, certain instruments had a red line at a critical value: air speed, engine rpm, oil pressure, intake manifold pressure, etc. These values were not to be exceeded in non-emergency operation. Of course, in an emergency there were no rules. Frank Harrington gave me a spontaneous example when I finally got him to recount an incident from his service. There were two German fighters on his tail. He was in gunsights whether he turned right or left. “I dove the son-of-a-bitch ‘til the wings were ready to come off. I redlined everything—air speed, rpm, manifold pressure. At a thousand feet I throttled back, pulled up. They flew over me so close I could read the print on their tires. One of them hit a smokestack and burned. I got the other with a burst right in the belly.”

According to Frank, when a pilot redlined any instrument or function in an emergency, he was supposed to report it to the maintenance people so the plane could be checked out, so it could be redlined if anything important had been damaged.

There is a third usage of redline in the military. In the Army, payday is a formal affair at which each soldier presents himself in turn at. the pay table, salutes, announces his name, signs the payroll, and is given his pay. But if a soldier does not present himself for whatever reason— AWOL, in the hospital, on detached duty, etc.—or if there is anything wrong with the entry on the line containing his name, he is redlined by having a horizontal red line drawn completely across the entry. In that event, he is not paid then and there, though he can usually get at least part of his pay before the next payday. But that provides slight immediate comfort, and being redlined can be a real tragedy in a young soldier’s life.

[W. M. Woods, Oak Ridge, Tennessee]

EPISTOLA {Ronald Mansbridge}

Ray Russell’s article, “The ‘Wicked’ Bibles” [VI, 4], lists some interesting and amusing examples of Bibles which he describes as “marred by bloopers.”

But Mr. Russell himself perpetrates one blooper which I cannot permit to pass uncorrected. He states that the 1653 “Unrighteous” Bible was printed at Cambridge. Not so. It was printed in London.

A. E. Housman, Kennedy Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge, told us that accuracy is not a virtue but a duty. Nevertheless, Cambridge men can take justifiable pride in the fact that the list of Bibles with notable misprints is largely made up of books printed in London, and subsequently at Oxford, which came to printing Bibles somewhat belatedly, in 1675.

It was the accuracy of Cambridge printing that enabled the University successfully to challenge the monopoly of the London printers in 1588; later, in 1629 and again in 1638, the Cambridge University Press produced editions of the Bible that corrected literally hundreds of errors that had crept into the London editions. The printers of the beautiful folio edition of 1638, Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel, were so proud of the accuracy of their book that they posted a notice on the door of Great St. Mary’s Church in Cambridge challenging readers to find a misprint in it and offering a free Bible to anyone who did so.

[Ronald Mansbridge, Weston, Connecticut]

EPISTOLA {Marc Drogin}

In regard to “The ‘Wicked’ Bibles,” the writer struck, perhaps unknowingly, directly upon the cause for all the typographical errors when he wrote, “Depending upon your point of view, these howlers might be considered . . . the work of the Devil. …”

All the errors cited were indeed inspired by the Devil, but as in any good corporate structure, the work was delegated to a subordinate. His name was Titivillus, and he has been known to have been at his task since about the middle of the Middle Ages.

He was probably created by the whimsy of the medieval monks who decried the carelessness of their fellows in the monasteries of Europe. Monks lulled by the repetitiousness of life, recitation, and work were prone to mumble the words of the service, jumble the words of the hymns, and make atrocious spelling errors in the works they copied in the scriptoria. Titivillus was a demon who reportedly lurked about monasteries and made notes on all these errors. Obliged by the Devil to collect 1000 sacks of such notations daily, Titivillus carried them to Hell, where each transgression was recorded against the erring monk for consideration when he died and would be considered for relocation in Heaven or Hell.

Titivillus apparently had difficulty locating so many transgressions and hit upon the idea of enticing scribes into making recordable errors, whereupon his success surpassed all bounds. In fact, late in the 14th century, he became (in a manner of speaking) the Patron Demon of professional scribes in London. Overworked, the guild of scribes claimed that the inordinate number of errors in their work was the result of Titivillus’ spell—thus exonerating themselves from any responsibility.

Titivillus was forced to diversify when printing came into full fashion and the number of scribes decreased. He became fascinated with the possibilities available in print- shops. If Mr. Russell is collecting Bible bloopers, he may not be aware of his monument to Titivillus' skills:

Sixtus V, pope from 1585 to 1590, apparently unaware of Titivillus, authorized a printing of the Vulgate Bible translated by Jerome. Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull automatically excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration in the text. This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible. He personally examined every sheet as it came off the press. Yet the published Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps had to be printed and pasted over them in every copy. The result provoked wry comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and Pope Sixtus had no recourse but to order the return and destruction of every copy.²

Titivillus is, or course, still with us, as any scribe or printer will testify.

VERBATIM readers who are interested in a quite serious and detailed study of Titivillus might turn to Margaret Jennings' Tutivillus - The Literary Career of the Recording Demon, published in Studies in Philology - Texts and Studies, 1977, Vol. LXXIV, No. 5, University of North Carolina Press, Dec. 1977. There are other, more obscure references to this delightful demon, which I’d be happy to share with anyone interested.

By the way, the two variant spellings of the demon’s name are not the latest examples of his handiwork: his name has traditionally had a multiplicity of spellings (or misspellings?).

[Marc Drogin, Exeter, New Hampshire]

---

[Editor’s Note: Readers of VERBATIM who are moved to consternation by the inordinate number of typographical errors in a given issue will be relieved to know the reason for them. In the future, please direct correspondence concerning same to P. D. Titivillus or to his employer, the Archfiend himself.]

EPISTOLA {Raymond Harris}

In the 1966 edition of the Jerusalem Bible, published in London by Darton Longman and Todd, there is an interesting misprint: on page 912, Psalm 122, there appears “Pay for Peace in Jerusalem” instead of Pray.

[Raymond Harris, London, Englad]

EPISTOLA {Jerrold S. Jensen}

To Joann Karges' rhymes and jingles I add the following:

argy-bargy
bigwig
boob tube
chalk talk
claptrap
ding-a-ling
hootchie-cootchie
hustle-bustle
jet set
leadhead
mellowyellow
mukluk
okey-dokey
ragbag
super-duper
zoot suit

As for Ms. Karges' “Accidental” category, why not downtown and, my very favorite, Okefenokee? To her “Intentional” category, how about legal beagle and, in the category of “Contrived” names, how about Rosanna Rosanna Dana? If Henny Penny can be included, why not the other names from Chicken Little: Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, and Turkey Lurkey?

There is another form of reduplicatives sometimes referred to as “ricochet” words. Though I have never seen it in print, my wife insists that there is a distinct difference between a ricochet word and a rhyming reduplicative: a ricochet word bounces, or glances off its twin word, as in chitchat and crisscross; in a sense, it flip-flops. A rhyming reduplicative, on the other hand, merely rhymes, as in hanky-panky and willy-nilly.

Here is a list of ricochet words, to which I earnestly invite additions:

bric-a-brac
chitchat
click-clack
crisscross
ding-dong
fiddle-faddle
flimflam
flip-flop
heehaw
King Kong
knickknack
mishmash
Ping-Pong
rickrack
riffraff
shilly-shally
ticktack
ticktock
tittle-tattle
topsy-turvy
wishy-washy
zigzag

[Jerrold S. Jensen, Salt Lake City, Utah]

[Editor’s Note: Here are a few more—I couldn’t resist—to help you get started: cookie, FIFO, gewgaw, riprap, see- saw, shipshape, slipslop, tontine.]

EPISTOLA {Priscilla R. Feigen}

A few additions to Joann Karges' “Rhyme and Jingle”: hotchpotch, titbit (source of tidbit), and rumdum.

[Priscilla R. Feigen, Palo Alto, California]

EPISTOLA {Benjamin Keller}

A special set of reduplicatives consists of words in which the first and second parts are identical. Some years ago I assembled the following lists:

ack-ack
baba
barabara
beriberi
bonbon
booboo
cancan
cha-cha
chichi
chowchow
cocoa
couscous
divi-divi
dodo
dumdum
froufrou
go-go
go-go
goo-goo (eyes)
juju
mahi-mahi
murmur
muumuu
no-no
nulla-nulla
pawpaw
so-so
ta-ta
tartar
tch-tch (tsk-tsk)
tom-tom
toto
tut-tut
ylang-ylang
yo-yo

Plus a special baby-talk group, mostly devised by adults:

bye-bye
ca-ca
din-din
doo-doo
mama
nana
papa
poopoo
turn-turn
wee-wee

[Benjamin Keller, Harbor City, California]

[Editor’s Note: We received a huge number of letters in response to “Rhyme and Jingle”-far too many to reproduce in any issue of VERBATIM. The letters above have been edited to avoid repeating the same words in lists sent in by several correspondents.]

EPISTOLA {Jay Ames}

“Rhyme and Jingle” [VI, 3] reminds me of the following piece of doggerel I ventured to commit to paper one wet Saturday afternoon some long time ago:

This cus cus
never makes a fuss
where aye-aye goes to sleep,
though tsetse
hums a hymn of death
where dik-dik tends to leap.
The bulbul
sings bright nightly lays
no motmot ever hears
while matta matta
slowly swims
in a wet, warm water sphere.
Though lava-lava
might be worn
where kava kava’s grown,
you’ll find more
Mau Mau on the moon
than tutus in Tyrone.

…which pales into significance alongside such duplicated place names as the Australian toponymies: Goonoo Goonoo ‘plenty water’; Bulla Bulla ‘four hills’; Walla Walla ‘lots of rain.’ (Strangely, the American place. Walla Walla, in Washington, is interpreted as ‘place of much water, place of streams’ by many authors.)

Aussie Willie Willie is akin to American ‘Possumtrot,’ and Mil Mil means ‘place of many eyes.’ I’ve yet to discover the meanings of names like Bora Bora and Pago Pago; I have been told that Sing Sing is for Ossining, which seems logical, so I can only hope it is also factual. Wagga Wagga ‘place of many crows’ is also Aussie in origin, but I doubt that our Crow Indians came from there, whatever the powwow.

[Jay Ames, Toronto, Canada]

EPISTOLA {Joseph Claro}

In “Obiter Dicta” [VI, 2], the charge that an preceding h must be chalked up to affectation seems a little harsh. The “rules” of an (the quotation marks are yours) specify its use before a vowel sound, not a vowel. In words beginning with h, where the first syllable is unstressed, the sound of the initial consonant is relatively weak. Ease of pronunciation, not affectation, marks the difference between a history book and an historical work.

[Joseph Claro, Scholastic Scope New York City]

[*Similarly from James Storrow, New York City, and Charlton Ogburn, Oakton, Virginia; generally agreeing with the Editor were Daniel T. Holbrook, Arlington Heights, Illinois, and John J. Menaugh, Bloomingdale, Illinois, who pointed out that H. W. Fowler decried the use of an before has being “pedantic” in the very first article in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage.

That may be comforting to others who follow Fowler slavishly, but I have found so many instances in which modern (good) usage is at variance with Fowler (simply because of the passage of time) that there is little solace to be found there. From a purely descriptive point of view, Messrs. Claro, Storrow, and Ogburn are perfectly right: that is why speakers use an before h. From another point of view-namely, the careful articulation of (American) English-such “weakening” of the h to allow the attraction of an would be considered sloppy. Fowler, of course, was faced with another problem: dropping haitches in England marks a speaker as a Cockney, whose style of speech was somewhat at variance with Fowler’s standards.]

EPISTOLA {T. S. Terrill}

In response to Sgt. Maj. Dan Cragg’s belief that a 1907 reference to “Bucket, G.I. on strap near axle under body” substantiates his contention that Gl means ‘galvanized iron,’ I suggest that if the Army had been acting true to form (in being so slow to change its ways) those buckets would have been wooden.

When I was a flying cadet at Randolph/Kelly Fields in ‘34/‘35, we referred to enlisted men as GI men.

[T. S. Terrill, Carlsbad, California]

EPISTOLA {John S. Hogg}

The derivation [of GI] from ‘galvanized iron’ is certainly interestingly unexpected, if not absurd, but there are probably a million eyewitnesses now living who were there and who remember it. ‘General Infantry’ doesn’t cut it because there was not, in fact, any such phrase in use. Maybe “German Infiltrator” would be a possibility, or conceivably Mr. Hereford’s father was a “Green Inductee.” Or maybe he was in Ouagadougou while I was at Fort Jay, cleaning GI cans when I pulled KP (which means ‘kitchen police’ but has nothing to do with the cops).

[John S. Hogg, Hamilton, New York]

EPISTOLA {Stanley Hubbard}

No doubt other readers have written you taking (non-governmental) issue with Mr. William Hereford’s statement [VI, 3] that “noninfantry combatants were not ordinarily referred to as GIs” during WW II. As a WW II artillery- man, I can testify that they most certainly were, in the Army, at least. And Government Issue was certainly the universally understood source of Gl at the time—and for the most obvious of reasons: once you’d been poured into a uniform and had your hair cropped short, that was exactly what you were-a depersonalized article, stamped with a number, and ready for consumption.

[Stanley Hubbard, Romanshorn, Switzerland]

EPISTOLA {Dan Cragg}

My preference [VI, 1] for the origin of GI from ‘galvanized iron’ via ‘general issue’ remains firm. Since writing that article, I have discovered further information that strongly reinforces the origin of GI from ‘General Issue.’ . . . The first piece is from William Manchester’s biography of General Douglas MacArthur (American Caesar, Little, Brown & Co., 1978, pp. 320-21), where, in response to a casual reference to the troops under his command as GIs, the general is quoted as having said, “Don’t ever do’that in my presence. . . . GI means ‘General Issue’ . . . call them soldiers. . . .” And who will question a five-star general?

A check of the glossary published in Bugle Notes (the handbook of the Corps of Cadets at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point) for 1939 reveals that even then GI was in use at The Point for the full form “enlisted man” and adjectivally for ‘General Issue.’ . . . Jonathan Lighter (American Speech, 47, 1/2, Spring-Summer 1972) refers to a cartoon of 1918 (in the Stars & Stripes?) captioned “A G. I. Christmas.” That is the earliest occurrence I have yet seen of the abbreviation replacing the full form, but I don’t know whether this was influenced by ‘galvanized iron,’ ‘government issue’ (or ‘garrison issue,’ which is interesting but unattested), or the “General Infantry” of Mr. Hereford’s father.

I am unfamiliar with “general infantry” as an official military term, although obviously it was in use at least conversationally in Mr. Hereford’s day, and it is entirely clear that artilleryman Hereford and his comrades believed that GI was derived from it. Remember how doughboy, an ancient and venerable word for an infantryman, was eventually applied to all the members of the AEF in WW II, infantrymen as well as signalmen, artillerymen (even Marines)? So, for an ex-gunner, perhaps the elder Mr. Hereford is not really that much off target and, although not exactly in the bull’s-eye, he hasn’t drawn “Maggie’s drawers” or an “artillery bull,” either.

[Dan Cragg, Arlington, Virginia]

EPISTOLA {Lt. Scott McCarthy}

I have a minor correction to make to Charles Faerber’s explanation of redding out [VI, 3]. Although the phenomenon does in fact occur when “pushing” through an outside loop, it is the result of excessive negative Gs. The loss of consciousness caused by positive Gs (a blackout), on the other hand, may be encountered while pulling through an inside loop. If the pilot releases back stick pressure before loss of consciousness, he will probably have experienced gray-out, characterized chiefly by tunnel vision and reduced sensitivity to external stimuli.

[Lt. Scott McCarthy, USN Fighter Squadron Thirty One]

EPISTOLA {William M. Bean, M.D.}

The term red-out is spread over a clinical manifestation of an unusual medical condition. It occurs when people who have an obstruction of the superior vena cava, the large vein that conveys blood back to the right side of the heart from the head and arms and upper chest. When a person with this form of obstruction leans over or lifts, he literally sees red and may feel faint or actually have a fainting spell. A fairly characteristic way in which this is produced is in changing tires, when the person leans forward and lifts a fairly heavy wheel.

[William M. Bean, M.D., University of Texas Medical Branch Galveston, Texas]

EPISTOLA {Nancy W. Feinstein}

Further to Edgon Margo’s follow-up [VI, 3] to Eisiminger’s and Gass’s colorful contributions, I propose the following additions:

We, the purple
Forever Amber
love, honor ando beige
Mount Carmel
Point Sienna
Claudia Cardinal
Cyd Cerise
caca teal
clean slate
the impossible cream
quite all white
gang green
meady ochre
the wind blue

[Nancy W. Feinstein, Petaluma, California]

EPISTOLA {Toni Snow}

The list of “Complementary Colors” [VI, 3] inspired my family to join in the game with the following results;

infer red
don’t-it-make-your-brown-eyes blue
agent orange
flying-people-eater purple
figure’s peach
village green
orang-u tan
shipwreck maroon
Governor Brown
unprovoked violet
post-partum blue
monster-eyed green

[Toni Snow, Rindge, New Hampshire]

EPISTOLA {W. K. Viertel}

Regarding “Short Cuts,” by David Galef [VI, 4], of course it is true that what we call gas the British call petrol. But petrol is not a shortened form of petroleum, it is a derived word. Petroleum is literally ‘rock oil,’ that is, crude oil as it comes from the ground, before refining into motor fuel and other products.

[W. K. Viertel, Canton, New York]

EPISTOLA {Norman W. Schur}

In her excellent article, “Preposition Pollution” [VI, 2], Barbara R. DuBois deals with the ominously growing misuse of prepositions. The article, presumably, deals solely with American English. The subject becomes more complicated when one takes into account the fact that there are wide differences between correct American and British usages in the matter of the preposition. That is especially true of the prepositions in and on; Britons live in such-and- such a street (although they do live on a road); in Britain, animals are on heat rather than in it, predictable events are on the cards rather than in them, athletes are on (not in) form, and things that are on the way (‘in a stage of development’) are on train as well as in train.

Different from is heard in Britain, but different to is more common; other to (for American other than), not frequently met with, is sometimes used. Here are some others:

AMERICAN	BRITISH
nervous about	nervous of
advantage over	advantage of
increase over	increase on
frontage on	frontage to
at auction	by auction
membership in	membership of
dry out	dry off
chat with	chat to
cater to (‘pander to’)	cater for
sit for (‘pose’)	sit to
snowed in	snowed up
mad/crazy about	mad/crazy on
visit to London	visit of London
Monday through Friday	Monday to Friday

There are, of course, many others. The “rule” governing among and between is regularly ignored in Britain: between is overworked while among rusts, for between is used most of the time when more than two persons or things are involved. For example. There is very little choice between the many alternatives. In America, we defend the usage the War Between the States on the grounds that there were only two sets of states involved, but the handbooks and usage books clamor for among when three or more things or people are involved-unless it is clear that the relationship under consideration is between only two of the members of the set at any one time.

[Norman W. Schur, Hawkhurst, Kent, England]

EPISTOLA {Alan Berson}

I disagree with Kirkham P. Ford’s observation with regard to what one does with a form in England [VI, 2]. I’ve been living in England for 22 years, and, after sampling some of my friends’ views, I discovered that the preferred order is fill in, fill out, and fill up (definitely non- U) a form. But one friend had the last word: “Actually,” he said, “we complete a form.”

[Alan Berson, London, England]

EPISTOLA {Norman R. Shapiro}

[We received a number of letters commenting on “Why ‘Butterfly’?” [VI, 4], and lack of space prevents us from printing more than the following, which are representative of the spirit of other remarks.]

In reply to Axel Hornos’s question, “Why ‘Butterfly’?” folk etymologists (not to mention folk entomologists) would, I think, answer that it is not “the product of unbridled fancy,” but rather a delightfully apt metathesis of flutter by. (This, of course, in brazen defiance of stodgier authorities, like the OED, that persist in spoiling the fun by tracing it back to ca 1000, with analogies in other sundry Germanic tongues.) All of which recalls an old piano solo by Zez Confrey, composer of Kitten on the Keys, entitled Flutter By, Butterfly. For all that, I think few will deny that butterfly is, at least, more attractive than caterpillar, whose etymology is a whole other can of worms.

On a more substantive note, I am also prompted to point out how ironic it is that English-which usually turns nouns to verbs with reckless abandon-is the only of the languages mentioned by Mr. Hornos whose name for this creature isn’t regularly transformed into a verb meaning ‘to flutter; flit here and there,’ etc. A Spaniard can mariposear, from mariposa; a Frenchman can papillonner, from papillon; a Portuguese can barboletear, from barboleta; an Italian can sfarfallare (or even, less commonly, farfalleggiare), from farfalla; a Rumanian can flutura, from fluture (though in this case the noun may well come from the verb). But who ever goes “butterflying about” in English?

[Norman R. Shapiro, Wesleyan University]

EPISTOLA {Ronald Grimes}

In a periodical the very rubrics of which appear in Latin, it might be expected that admirers of Latinate polysyllabicity would from time to time descend upon unfortunate vocables of humble Anglo-Saxon origin and attempt to do them violence, but Axel Homos goes too farl He writes that “… as a rule, English words of Latin ancestry [sic] bear a close resemblance to their equivalents in Romance languages.” Yet butterfly, according to Mr. Hornos, “makes a mockery of this rule.” But what evidence is there for his claim that the English word derives from Latin papilio? The Old English form buttorfleoge shows that this is no upstart neologism, pace Mr. Hornos, but rather a venerable member of the English language. Also of interest here is the German Schmetterling (etymologically ‘cream-licker’), certainly more relevant for butterfly’s semantic origins than Mr. Homos’s speculations.

Instead of wringing his hands in dismay over the existence of Anglo-Saxon morphemes, Mr. Homos should rejoice in the impulse that keeps even Romance languages from fading to mere etiolated epigones of Latin. Verbum sap.!

[Ronald Grimes, Silver Spring, Maryland]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“A high-ranking state Alcoholic Beverage Commission official said Friday that Wednesday’s retroactive renewal and transfer of the beverage permit of the rural Bloomington Liars’ Lodge by the Monroe County Alcoholic Beverage Board was ‘unique but not uncommon.”’ —The Herald- Telephone, Bloomington, Indiana, undated issue from autumn, 1979. [Submitted by Annabel Wolfson, Worcester, Massachusetts.]

Oklahoma! Okay!

Dick Mayo

For most of my adult life I really have tried to speak as well as I could. It may be that I don’t speak the King’s English, but I at least have attempted to employ the President’s English.

I was one of 17 U.S. newspaper writers and publishers on a June, 1978, study mission to Scandinavia. We had just concluded a 45-minute interview, in English, with Mr. Per Kleppe, Norwegian Minister of Finance. Our delegation leader. Bob Bailey of the Buhl, Idaho, Herald, said to Kleppe, “We have been asking you questions for close to an hour. Do you have questions you would like to ask any of us?”

“Yes, how did it come to be that not everyone speaks English in the U.S.?” inquired the Norwegian. Bailey assured him that everyone in the U.S. does, in fact, speak English.

“Then how can it be I can’t understand anything that gentleman over there says?” I was crushed when he pointed directly at me.

“Oh,” Bailey said. “He’s from Oklahoma. Very few of us understand him, either.”

Now, thanks to Mrs. Neome Pratt, my problem is defined. Mrs. Pratt sent me a handy little reference book entitled “The Good 01' Boy Okie Dictionary.” Compiled by Daniel Hudgins and published by the Chase Organization of Tulsa, it contains over 250 entries, spelled phonetically, which are representative of the language characteristics of Oklahomans—eastern variety in particular. Thumbing through its pages, a story of squashed (that’s just to get you in the mood) love came to mind:

Fred was in his room, trying to study his aljibur. He had a sody in his hand. His eyes kept staring at the big ol ellum tree and the winner, jist outside his wender. He was thinking about winner, but xpeshly he was wushing Mary Lou would give him a break and go to the raglar Sattidy night daince with him.

He looked at his paper, which was full of urras. “Humm, I wonner why I cain’t be more ackrit?” he axed hisself. “It’s that gurl. My mine is on her alatime.”

“I shore cain’t go on lak this,” he thought. “I shore do hait to baig her; but if there’s a chaince she’d go, I’d doll her up in a secont. I lak that gurl so much, I’d lak to be her shadder and foller her everywhur.”

So he ris up and went to the Frigidaire an fixed hisself a samich an another sody. After he finished eating, he went to the phone and dolled up Mary Lou.

“Wadja doin, Mary Lou?” he axed her.

“Nothin. I was jist sittin here waiting for word from my uncle Joe, who had a cardiact attackt yistidy. I ain’t had an ainser yit, an I’m tremlin all over. I have an idy he’s about to xpar.”

“He’s yore spashal uncle, ain’t he, Mary Lou?”

“Yes, he’s the one that grows brammers. Uncle Joe has a real strong bidey; but when he rassled that big ol brammer bull an they wound up in the bobwar, I think it started this bresh with death. He was cut up fierce and than had this attackt. They carried him to the hospital in an amlance.”

“I’m shore he’ll get well soon, Mary Lou.”

“Say, I’m jist desprit to take you out. Watcha say about going to the daince with me Sattidy night? You shore do make my heart thob. I promise I won’t get frash. We can get some vaneller ice cream an eat it on the vydock on the way to the daince.”

“Well, Fred, I’ve always thought of you as being sorda exter, but I speck I’d better not. I’m foolin round with Leroy an he don’t lak you. He called you a stripped some-sort-of-thang, and I’m skiert he’d get vilent if I went out with you.”

“Mary Lou, are you pullin my laig? That sprizes me, about Leroy.”

“Not one liddle bit.”

“I guess I’d better row my boat somers else. I’d hate to wind up at the kwarpractor’s. But, Mary Lou, you’ve jist stomped on my heart an smashed that sucker flat.”

“I can’t hep that, Fred. I’ve got to study my joggerfee now. Bye.”

Perhaps Mr. Kleppe was right.

A Place for Everything …

Paul Jennings, who writes a column for The Guardian called “Oddly Enough,” provided a valuable source for onomasticians in an (undated) article on English place names. Selecting the names of real places in England, Jennings pointed out how many had acquired semantic overtones. A selection follows:

Bewdley, adv. with the words replaced by others of a bawdy nature; hence bewdlerized.

Blackpool, n. a mood of despondency. Bodmin, n. a unit of work. 60 bodmins = 1 man-hour. See worksop.

Chislehurst, n. 1. a carpenter’s shop. 2. (joc.) the Stock Exchange.

Didcot, n. a maternity ward.

Edgware, n. cutlery.

Letchworth, n. a libertine.

Purfleet, n. a racing cat.

Tring, n. a timed telephone call (in towns).

Truro, n. an untimed telephone call (in rural areas).

Virginia Water, n. a perfume used in the eighteenth century.

Wadhurst, n. affluence.

Wantage, n. penury (“from wantage to wadhurst”). Worksop, n. the minimum legal amount of work in a day. It varies from country to country. In Japan it is 10 man-hours, in Germany 8 man-hours, in England 143 bodmins.

Jennings could not be expected to cover American place names, so we provide some here. Readers may wish to offer their contributions as well.

Wichita, n. a code word used in Salem, Mass., for black magic.

Athol, n. an affectionate, if dysphemic term for his home town of Terre Haute, Indiana; said to have originated with a lisping mayor at the turn of the century.

Ashtabula, n. from an exhortation, misread by a besotted Biblical scholar who urged his nagging wife “Get your Ashtabula.”

Paramus, n. former marine camp in New Jersey.

Confusion Compounded

J. D. Sadler, Sherman, Texas

We have three perfectly good words in English, guarantee, warranty, and guaranty, all of the same origin and having the same meaning. Now some people are trying to add a fourth, warrantee. A TV salesman says, “We have a great warrantee on this product,” while the word warrant is on the screen. The word warrantee of course exists, but it means ‘someone who receives a warranty.’ Perhaps this new warrantee is related to the trustee at the jail, a term which can be both heard and seen.

A missing e can make a difference in the following examples. A recent headline stated HUNDREDS KILLED IN REFUGE SLAUGHTER. And the sports page contributes with this quote: “That victory was certainly good for our moral.” One more that I have seen: “I loath doing this”.

Simple misspellings frequently occur, as in “copywrite” and “playwrite.” One that rarely is spelled correctly is “straight-laced.” “He has a real flare for this kind of work,” runs the news story. And the fact that the work was difficult didn’t “phase” him one bit. When I was teaching Latin and the students had to write “he led,” half the class would write “he lead.” “Lead” makes a fine sinker but not a very good past tense verb.

Blunders such as these are not limited to newspapers, television and the like. Confusion can be found even in the groves of academe. A professor of my acquaintance never knew the difference between spectrum and specter. He would cheerfully “raise a spectrum” and “go through the abstentia.” Another once spoke of “skewered” data, in which I had to visualize the data as ready for the barbecue grill.

When gold first became available to the public, more than one newscaster spoke of the selling of gold “bouillon.” Gold soup doesn’t sound very appetizing. A quite common mispronunciation is “whelp” for “welt”: “He has some big whelps on his arm.”

Finally, three that refuse to be classified. A certain politician, in a speech here, said, “That was simply incredulous.” With that statement he lost my vote. A newspaper story about coin collecting caught my attention with a reference to the “pneumismatic” market. And there was the strange tale of the couple on vacation who returned home to find their house “ramshackled.”

SIC! SIC! SIC!

On June 12, 1980, The New York Post quoted John Anderson as saying, “I’m not going to stand up and genuflect to the Ayatollah Khomeini.” [Submitted by Martin Meyers, New York City.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“More than most, the gang over at Scali, McCabe, Sloves knows that if you work hard, keep your nose to the grindstone, care diligently for clients and maintain high honesty and moral terpitude good things will happen to your business.”— The New York Times, July 22, 1980, in Philip H. Dougherty’s column. Advertising. [Submitted by Henry C. Maguire, Killingworth, Connecticut.]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Words On Words

John B. Brenner, (Columbia University Press, 1980), xii + 406pp.

Subtitled “A Dictionary for Writers and Others Who Care About Words,” this chunky book contains a great deal of useful information about language. It is in alphabetical order, which means that you have to know what you are looking for before you can find it, and it seems unlikely to me that a user will ever be looking for entries like HEADLINESE, MNEMONIC, or PENTAGONESE. Therefore, in order to derive the best use from this extremely sane, useful work the reader must first look through it to familiarize himself with its contents, then go back to use it as a reference guide; when the appropriate occasion arises, he may be fortunate enough to remember what it contains (e.g., MNEMONIC).

The information in the entries is clearly set forth. I do have a few objections, however. Under ALLOTTED, where the author lists some verbs (like cancel, benefit, etc.) that do not double their final consonants for their various oblique forms, he fails to indicate that those that do double them are characteristically stressed (wholly or in part) on the final syllable of their base forms. Also, kidnaped, kidnaping, because of the secondary stress on the -nap of kidnap, are more often spelled with double p (Brenner to the contrary). And what of cancellation and the many other words like cancel and benefit? It isn’t apparent that the author has given a role with some illustrations, but that opacity may be owing more to the style of the book than to its writing. Besides, emphasis that such a rule is followed in American English but not in British would have been useful.

Generally, the entries cover topics traditionally treated in usage books and manuals; but it is the extra added attractions that make the book interesting, even though I am not always sure why they have been included. For example, why an entry on COSMO- (as in cosmetic, cosmology, etc.) unless it is because Brenner likes it? And the entry COSELLISM is amusing and to the point, but I have never encountered the word, hence would never think to look it up. Similarly, the entry EDUCANTO/EDUCATIONIST offers some telling comments, but who ever heard the term outside of Koerner’s book (which I never heard of and which seems to be missing from the credits in the introduction)?

The book’s style has a friendly, though admonitory, practical ring to it, and it contains a lot of solid information and advice. If you can afford it and/or like to collect such works, it is a worthwhile book to have around.

Laurence Urdang

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GIFTS FOR SAVING - FREE OR AT SUBSTANTIAL SAVINGS. -Sign in a savings and loan office window in Chicago. [Submitted by Alex J. Pollock, Northbrook, Illinois, who remarks, Some gifts you have to pay for!]

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THIS STORE IS PROTECTED AGAINST SHOPLIFTING BY SECURITY PERSONNEL.—Sign in a local supermarket in Thunder Bay, Ontario. [Submitted by Robert S. Dilley, Thunder Bay, Ontario who comments. So much for their opinion of the local forces of law and order!]

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Heard on Boston radio, week of June 21, 1980, in an obituary for a nonagenarian millionaire, whose rags-to- riches career was characterized as a “modern-day Alger Hiss story.” [Submitted by Norman R. Shapiro, Wesleyan University who suggest, Whittaker Chambers please take (posthumous) note.]

Crossword Puzzle

Across

1. Thrill to the Gallic life around the enfant terrible. (7)
5. Moisture not confined to its normal wet season. (7)
9. Move by legislatures to raise their own salaries, so it seems. (9,6)
10. Ready for some old-fashioned fun? This provides it. (10)
11. Ice water … (4)
13. … would be wrong, in short, when serving wine. (6)
14. Constitutional start with an early walk? (8)
17. Concerning voiced speech sound, it should be distinctly audible. (8)
18. Not exactly a girl’s best friend. (6)
20. Adequate nut to set up two small firms. (4)
22. Bent out of the way as the Ripper slashed. (10)
25. Ways and means behind the scenes. (8, 7)
26. Out-of-work journalist to give her opinion . . . (7)
27. … about being cut and calling her a Red! (7)

Down

1. Veep needs aid, being flat broke. (5)
2. Eggs. (9)
3. Doing extra to mask self-serving purpose. (3, 2, 5)
4. Don’t get mad, get even. (6)
5. It’s the very devil to lose five at one birth. (8)
6. Eyeshades dispensed by swindlers? (4)
7. Dogface, down in the drink, yet lively enough. (5)
8. Good money to be made in the great putting stretch. (4, 5)
12. One matter I handle on my busy lines is that amusing little doll. (10)
13. Take recruits to tea, despite adverse criticism. (9)
15. A sweat, when the game is afoot, especially with a desire to make money. (4,5)
16. Elected and of great renown, but still disgraceful. (8)
19. MP caught in surreptitious kiss gets away cheaply. (6)
21. Sharp comic? (15)
23. Treated, perhaps not too pleasantly. (5)
24. Broken open on the reef. (4)

Crossword Puzzle Answers

Across

1. T-urm-OIL
5. Acti-0-ns
9. INCREASED SALARY (anagram of YARN in RAISED SCALE)
10. UNPOLITIC
11. Hello
12. Asia-tic
13. Mint
17. AWOL
18. (s)EX PUN GE(e whiz)
22. Amb.le
23. Doctor-ate
24. Lie like a trooper
25. Endmost
26. Ro-SET-te

Down

1. Trip up
2. Recipes for bread
3. Overload
4. Last trip
5. A.B.-duct
6. TR-ash-Y
7. On a flying carpet
8. S-1-YBO-ot-S
14. CANAILLE
15. Executor
16. HUM-oro-US
19. Me-DI-co
20. A.D.-vent
21. Degree

Internet Archive copy of this issue

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1. Once and for all, let it be set forth that in its pursuit of accuracy, VERBATIM maintains a distinction among The Sunday Times, published in London (on Sundays), The Times, published in London (every day but Sundays and certain bank holidays that seem to change as the mood strikes the editors), and The New York Times, published in you-know-where. ↩︎

2. Medieval Calligraphy - Its History & Technique, Marc Drogin. Abner Schram Ltd., New Jersey, and George Prior Associates, London ↩︎