VOL VIII, No 3 [Autumn, 1981]

Meretricious Words, or The Quean’s English

Bryan Garner, Austin, Texas

Meretrix, specioso nomine rem odiosam denotante.

—Plato (Plut. et Athen.)

In the English Renaissance, Fortune was commonly personified as a fickle strumpet, as in the scene from Hamlet where the protagonist banters bawdily with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: *The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974). Hereinafter cited in text.

HAM: Good lads, how do you both?
ROS: As the indifferent children of the earth.
GUIL: Happy, in that we are not over-happy, on
Fortune’s cap we are not the very button
HAM: Nor the soles of her shoe?
ROS: Neither, my lord.
HAM: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favors?
GUIL: Faith, her privates we.
HAM: In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet.

(2.2.225—36)

The metaphor suggested itself because Fortune, with her unsteady Wheel, is fickle and inconstant, as strumpets were commonly thought to be. But if strumpets themselves have been inconstant in the popular mind, then it is certainly apt that the fortunes of their distinctive epithets have been equally inconstant, for, historically, speakers of English have licentiously jumped from term to whorish term to describe practitioners of the oldest, most venerable of human occupations.

We have therefore inherited scores of synonyms for prostitute that seemingly cover—or, rather, uncover—every possible nuance of the scortatory hierarchy, from the tinselly, grand courtesan to the abject, base slut. In fact, the synonyms for prostitute probably outnumber those of any other comparably specific meaning. Why is this? Perhaps it is because those in the underworld, who are most deeply involved with prostitution, have the raciest argot (almost invariably ephemeral) and wield words more boldly, loosely, and inventively than other speakers. Or perhaps it results from a popular fixation with the less pleasant, seedier aspects of human existence. Then again, it may demonstrate that we are perennially witness to more vice than virtue.

However that may be, and whether we find prostitution a barbarous, abhorrent practice or a desirable societal peccadillo, it is of interest to word-lovers to see how the copious English appellations for prostitutes have developed and changed through the centuries. Many of these terms exemplify the witty and ironic creativeness of English speakers; my own favorite in this regard is laced mutton, a British slang phrase current in the 16th—18th centuries, in which the ambiguity of laced is quite effective. It might mean ‘bedizened with lace,’ ‘corseted,’ ‘tenderized,’ ‘slightly squiffed’ (i.e., ‘flavored with alcohol’), or ‘savory and zestful’—perhaps all of these. Forthwith the rest of the list, with some cursory notes and explanations made in consultation with the OED; with Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Dictionary of the Underworld, Slang Today and Yesterday, and Name Into Word; with Wentworth and Flexner’s Dictionary of American Slang; with Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (W3); and with Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

abbess ironic slang for ‘brothel-keeper,’ ca. 17th—19th centuries; obs.

abandoned woman abandoned in the sense of ‘self-abandoned,’ ‘given over to vice’; euphemism.

adventuress also has a slightly broader meaning, ‘a woman who lives by questionable means.’

bar-girl see B-girl.

bawd [Middle English bawde, perh. fr. Middle French baude ‘bold, merry’] ‘a procuress’; formerly used of either sex.

bawd-strot [fr. Old French baudetrot? OED remarks that strot suggests Teutonic strutt, and bawd Middle French baud ‘bold’] variant of bawd; obs.

B-girl [fr. bar-girl] ‘a prostitute who meets her prospective clients in bars’; often a B-girl may be employed by a bar to entertain men and induce them to buy a lot of drinks.

bit cf. piece.

broad U.S. slang fr. ca. 1910; also means ‘woman’; obsolescent.

bunter [origin unknown] ‘a low harlot and thief’; British, 18th—19th centuries, obs.

burick [origin unknown] ‘prostitute’ ante 1851; during the 19th century, it was increasingly used to mean ‘wife’ among Cockneys; obs.

cab-moll ‘a harlot professionally partial to cabs or trains,’ ca. 1840—1900.

callet [perhaps, as W3 suggests, fr. Middle French caillette ‘frivolous person,’ after Caillette, a French court fool of ca. 1500] obs. exc. as Scottish and dialectal English.

call-girl ‘a prostitute who arranges her rendezvous over the telephone’; originally, however, ‘a prostitute who works in a call-house’ (i.e., a brothel).

camp follower ‘a harlot who follows a military unit’; cf. V-girl.

cocodette [alteration of French cocodète, fem. of cocodès ‘fop, dandy’] ‘a high-society French prostitute.’

cocotte [according to W3, fr. French (baby-talk) cocotte ‘hen’] a “forbidden word,” wrote Mencken in The American Language.

conciliatrix ‘a bawd or procuress’; obs.

concubine [Latin, literally ‘one who lies with (another)'] ‘a kept woman; a mistress; sometimes misapplied for courtesan.

corinthian [fr. Corinth, a region of ancient Greece] ‘a profligate addicted to salacity and dissipation’—used of both sexes in English (but cf. korinthiazesthai ‘to be a prostitute’).

courtesan, courtezan [French ‘woman courtier’] ‘a prostitute with an aristocratic or upper-class clientele.’

cruiser ‘a peripatetic whore’; ‘any person who cruises’; slang.

Cyprian [fr. Latin Cyprius ‘native of Cyprus’ (reputed birthplace of Aphrodite)] archaic.

daughter of joy translation of French fille de joie.

debauchee ‘one given to sensual excess’; used of either sex in English; a euphemism when used for ‘whore.’

demimondaine [French ‘inhabitant of the half-world’] ‘a courtesan who serves the upper class and strives to maintain the appearance of respectability’; OED says that this meaning is improper and recommends ‘a prostitute on the outskirts of society.’

demirep ‘a woman with only half a reputation’; slang fr. 18th century.

doll [ = Doll = Dorothy] traditional name for a wanton; 20th-century slang for paramour.’

doxy, doxie [origin unknown] fr. 16th century; dialectal as ‘girl friend, sweetheart.’

drab [akin to Irish drabog and Gaelic drabag ‘dirty female’] ‘a filthy slut.’

erring sister a typical Victorian euphemism.

fallen woman a typical Victorian euphemism.

fancy girl self-evident.

fancy lady self-evident.

fancy woman self-evident.

floozy, floosy, floosey, etc. [Partridge suggests rel. to flusey ‘female pudend’; he also conjectures (in Origins) that floozy = Flossie = Flora, the goddess] legitimately, ‘a becoming loose woman,’ but also, slang, ‘a slovenly harlot.’

fornicatress a euphemism when applied to prostitutes; fornication ‘coitus other than between a man and his wife or his concubine.’

fornicatrix same as preceding entry.

frail sister euphemism.

garrison-hack ‘a soldiers’ harlot’; 19th-century British slang.

gin [fr. gin ‘female Australian aborigine’] ‘a black prostitute,’ U.S. slang, ca. 1920; obs.

gold-digger ‘an avaricious woman who exploits her femininity to extract gifts and money from men’; U.S. slang, ca. 1915.

gun moll ‘the mistress of a gangster or crook,’ U.S. underworld slang, ca. 1931; moll here primarily in the sense of ‘thief’; obs.

harlot [fr. Old French herlot ‘rogue’] as suggested by the etymon, this word formerly referred more commonly to knavish men (fr. 13th century) than to whorish women (fr. 15th century); Mencken labels it a “forbidden word.”

harridan [perh. fr. French haridelle ‘old jade horse’] ‘a worn-out old harlot’; Dr. Johnson: “a decayed strumpet”; ca. 1700-1864; now refers vituperatively to termagants and shrews.

hetaera, hetaira [Greek for ‘companion’] ‘one of the highly cultivated courtesans of ancient Greece.’

hooker ‘one who hooks or entraps, often in a happy manner’; 20th century.

hostess see madam.

house girl ‘a prostitute who works in a bagnio’—as contrasted to a call-girl (in the modern sense) or streetwalker.

hussy, huzzy [fr. Middle English huswif, whence also housewife] a pejorative term since the 18th century; denotes a ‘loose, brazen woman or a prostitute.’

hustler U.S. slang fr. ca. 1900.

joy girl perh. a translation of French fille de joie; slang (cf. joy house ‘brothel.')

kept mistress a common term that may be redundant, since mistress usu. means ‘kept woman.’

kept woman see preceding and following entries.

keptie like the preceding two entries, ‘a woman nicely supported by a man in return for sexual favors.’

lady of assignation in this entry and in the following five, lady is employed ironically; cf. fancy lady.

lady of leisure see preceding entry.

lady of pleasure see lady of assignation.

lady of the evening see lady of assignation.

lady of the lake ‘mistress’; see lady of assignation.

lady of the night see lady of assignation.

lewd woman a term of contempt in polite society, hence a pejorative euphemism.

limmer [origin unknown] generally Scottish and dialectal English; The Scottish National Dictionary traces the meaning ‘prostitute’ from ca. 1728, but the OED dates this meaning fr. the early 16th century; refers also to scoundrelly men.

loose woman a genteelism.

lost woman a genteelism.

mab [fr. 17th-century form of mop; perh. also a short form of Mabel] slang fr. 17th century, now Standard (British) English.

madam, madame obs. as ‘prostitute’; now ‘the head of a brothel’; according to Mencken, the word is “forbidden” in this sense.

malkin [ = Mall = Mary (Partridge); according to the OED, a diminutive of Matilda, Maud] ‘slattern’; Scottish fr. ca. 1540, obs. in British English exc. as dialectal; also denoted the female pudend (perh. fr. its association with cat, hence pussy).

market-dame ‘a harlot of the marketplace’; colloquial fr. 18th century; increasingly Standard English.

meretrix [fr. Latin merere ‘to earn, gain’] the suffix humorously suggests the service paid for, and the entire word Mary Tricks.

minion [fr. French mignon, mignonne ‘favorite or darling’] ‘paramour, mistress’; now literary.

miss [short for mistress] ‘prostitute’ was one of this word’s earliest meanings, though it is now archaic.

moll [= Moll = Mary] ‘a common whore,’ fr. ca. 1600; in U.S. 20th-century slang, “any woman regardless of condition,” according to Partridge.

mopsy [origin unknown] ‘a disreputable and slovenly woman,’ though earlier a term of endearment; obs. exc. as dialectal British English.

mort [origin unknown; euphemistic Latinism for the Elizabethan die ‘to have orgasm’?] also denote merely ‘girl’ or ‘woman’; fr. 16th century, now archaic.

naughty pack ‘a lubricious woman of questionable reputation,’ though it can refer to either sex; obs.

nightwalker ‘any person who roves about at night.’

nun ironic for ‘harlot’ fr. ca. 1770, though nunnery ‘brothel’ fr. late 16th century—hence the ambiguity of Hamlet’s cry to Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunn’ry!” (3.1.120); obs.

nymph aside fr. mythological association, ‘a woman of loose morals’; euphemistic in reference to whores.

nymph of the darkness elegant variation of lady of the night.

nymph of the pavement translation of French nymphe du pavé.

odalisque [fr. French odalique, fr. Turkish ōdahliq. ‘chambermaid’] ‘a female slave in the harem of a Turkish sultan.’

one of the frail sisterhood a Victorian euphemism.

pack ‘a man or woman of low character,’ hence often applied to whores as well as to others regarded as dregs; archaic.

painted woman self-evident.

Paphian ‘a devotee of the Paphian Venus; a prostitute’ (OED). Paphos was a Cyprian city sacred to Aphrodite or Venus and hence became associated with sexual indulgence.

paramour [fr. Old French par amour ‘through or by way of love’] ‘one who loves illicitly’—usu. used of women, and sometimes euphemistically of prostitutes; the word is virtually synonymous with mistress.

party doll same as following entry.

party girl ‘a young woman employed to entertain men at parties.’

perfect lady British slang for ‘anything but a perfect lady’ (Partridge); derives either from the claims of prostitutes or from the irony of whoremongers and other men.

pickup humorously suggestive of ‘pick-me-up.’

pom-pom girl during World War II, U.S. servicemen used pom-pom to mean ‘sexual intercourse.’

pro [short for professional, not prostitute (Wentworth and Flexner)].

pross [short for prostitute] low British slang fr. ca. 1880.

prossy [same as preceding] 20th-century U.S. slang.

punch [akin to the vb. punch ‘deflower’] late 17th to mid-19th century; cf. punch-house ‘bagnio.’

punk [origin unknown] obsolescent slang not to be confused with punk-rocker.

pure ‘a kept woman, wanton,’ British, 17th-19th centuries; obs.

purest pure ‘a courtesan of high fashion,’ fr. ca. 1690 to ca. 1830; obs.

quean [fr. Old English cwene, akin to the etymon of queen].

rig [Middle English riggen, of uncertain derivation] dialectal English; cf. riggish ‘sluttish,’ as in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, where Enobarbus speaks thus of Cleopatra:

Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish. (2.2.235-39)

saleslady U.S. slang fr. ca. 1920.

Saturday-to-Monday ‘a weekend mistress’; British slang fr. ca. 1900, perh. having arisen as a variation of the earlier weekender, q.v.; obs.

scarlet woman also—ironically—when capitalized, ‘The Roman Catholic Church.’

shady lady self-evident.

skit [of obscure origin] ‘a wanton,’ now obs. in this dialectal sense; cf. skittish ‘capricious, fickle’ (and formerly suggestive of ‘whorish,’ as in Shakespeare’s phrase “skittish Fortune’s hall,” Troilus and Cressida 3.3.134).

slattern [akin to slut] ‘a slovenly prostitute.’

slut [Middle English slutte] a word with strong connotations of opprobrium—suggests uncleanness.

sporting girl cf. sporting house ‘brothel.’

street girl self-evident.

streetwalker self-evident.

strumpet [Middle English strompet, of obscure origin].

sultana [fr. fem. form of Italian sultano, fr. Arabic sultān] ‘a mistress or paramour of a royal personage, esp. of a sultan.’

tart [Middle English tarte, fr. Middle French] originally a term of endearment, this “forbidden word” (Mencken) for comparatively young prostitutes pejorated ca. 1900.

tom ‘an old prostitute’ or ‘a mannish prostitute’; current fr. mid-19th to early 20th century.

tommy low slang of the 20th century.

tottie, totty [prob. fr. Dot = Dorothy] British for ‘a high-class, well-dressed harlot,’ fr. ca. 1880.

tramp contemporary; also used of men in the sense of ‘a begging or thieving vagrant.’

trapes (usu. British), traipse (usu. U.S.) ‘slattern,’ 17th—18th centuries, now archaic.

trollop [akin to trull] a “forbidden word” (Mencken).

trull [fr. obs. German Trulle ‘prostitute’] contemptuous.

unfortunate used of outcasts generally, whether prostitutes, prisoners, or other pariahs.

unfortunate female like the preceding entry, a genteelism.

unfortunate woman like the preceding entry, a genteelism.

V-girl [for ‘victory girl’] ‘a wartime amateur camp follower or pickup.’

vice girl self-evident.

wanton [fr. Middle English wantowen ‘(one) deficient in discipline’] used of the dissipated of either sex, and commonly of whores.

weekender same as Saturday-to-Monday; British, ca. 1885; obs.

wench [shortened and pejorated fr. Old English and Middle English wenchel ‘a child or common woman’] formerly ‘a young girl,’ the word pejorated during the 14th century; by the late 19th and early 20th centuries it had become a “forbidden word” and is now used only disparagingly or jocosely to suggest looseness or whorishness.

white slave ‘a white woman or girl held under duress for the purposes of commercial prostitution,’ as in Bartley Campbell’s play The White Slave (1857).

whore [fr. Old English hōre] even more taboo than other “forbidden words,” this term and slut are probably the most universal denigrating terms for ‘prostitute.’

woman of easy morals like the following seven entries, a euphemism.

woman of easy virtue an ironic phrase, for “easy virtue” is patently a vice.

woman of ill fame self-evident.

woman of ill repute self-evident.

woman of loose character self-evident.

woman of the street(s) self-evident; cf. nymphe du pavé, trottoise.

woman of the town euphemism.

working girl euphemism.

young woman of pleasure a loan-translation of French fille de joie. Synecdochic and metonymic terms:

bag a metaphor for the female pudend or womb?

baggage fr. 16th century, obs. by 1800; Shakespeare used this word several times in this sense, e.g.:

BAWD. The stuff [i.e., whores] we have, a
strong wind will blow it to pieces
[a pun?], they are so pitifully
sodden [i.e., they have been
oversoaked in sweat-tubs as
treatment for the pox].

PANDAR. Thou sayest true; they’re too
unwholesome, o’ conscience. The
poor Transylvanian is dead, that lay
with the little baggage. (Pericles
4.2.18—23)

barber’s chair an allusion to the phrase, “as common as a barber’s chair” ‘fit for common use’ (Partridge); British, 17th—19th centuries; obs.

bat ‘a prostitute who works at night’; British, 17th—19th centuries; U.S. slang, ca. 1920; obs.

bit of fluff 20th-century slang.

bit of muslin slang of ca. 1873; obs.

bit of mutton 19th—20th-century slang.

bitch ‘a lewd or immoral woman; slut,’ fr. ante 1400.

blue gown British, ca. 1913; obs.

canary ‘mistress,’ 18th—19th centuries; as cant, “harlot”; obs.

cat 16th—19th centuries; obs.

chippy, chippie ‘a bold, sexually promiscuous woman,’ fr. the primary meaning, “the chipping sparrow”; U.S. slang fr. ca. 1890, and a “forbidden word” according to Mencken.

fox obs. in the sense of ‘prostitute’; now refers to any eyesome female.

fruit ‘readily picked’ (like so much fruit), hence ‘an easily obliging girl or woman,’ since ca. 1910.

glue neck ‘a filthy harlot,’ U.S. slang fr. ca. 1920; cf. glued ‘affected with venereal disease.’

goods ‘a white slave.’

hay-bag ‘something to lie upon,’ but perhaps also suggestive of an old whore’s appearance; fr. 1850, now mainly U.S. slang.

heifer U.S. slang fr. ca. 1920 (cf. heifer den ‘brothel’).

hot beef 19th-century slang.

hot meat 19th-century slang.

hot mutton 19th-century slang.

jade fr. the primary meaning, ‘a worn-out horse.’

light skirt ‘a loose woman,’ late 19th through early 20th century.

loose fish current in 19th century; obs.

nag same as jade.

piece ‘girl’ fr. 14th century; ‘harlot’ fr. ca. 1580 to ca. 1830.

piece of goods same as preceding.

piece of muslin British, ca. 1875—1910.

piece of mutton 17th century to early 19th century.

piece of trade self-evident.

pig ‘a slovenly whore’; 20th-century U.S. slang.

rainbow perhaps fr. the colorful dress of prostitutes; British slang fr. ca. 1820 to ca. 1870.

rip ‘a worn-out worthless horse’; cf. jade and nag.

skirt ‘woman,’ but also ‘harlot,’ since to skirt means ‘to be a harlot,’ as does to flutter a skirt (Partridge); 19th—20th centuries.

sloop of war 19th-century British slang; obs.

soiled dove 20th-century Southern U.S. slang.

stew ‘a whore,’ but more commonly ‘a bordello.’

twist ‘a light woman,’ U.S. slang fr. ca. 1890; obs.

wagtail fr. the species of bird—the term is suited to prostitutes in describing a come-hither walk; British slang of 17th—18th centuries.

Eponyms:

Aspasia consort of Pericles; though she was not actually a hetaera, “dour biographers call her an adventuress” (Partridge); hence the common conception.

Delilah perfidious and treacherous mistress of Samson.

Doll Tearsheet an apparently luetic harlot in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV; Falstaff says to her: “If the cook help to make the gluttony, you help to make the diseases, Doll. We catch of you, Doll, we catch of you.” (2.4.44—46).

Jane Shore ca. 1445—1527; mistress of King Edward IV, of William, Baron Hastings (beheaded by Richard III), and of Thomas Grey, 1st Marquis of Dorset.

Jezebel fr. Queen Jezebel, wife of Ahab—“used figuratively for a bold-faced, evil prostitute or bedizened woman of not invincible virtue” (Partridge).

Kate proverbial name for prostitutes; current ca. 1860, and later used especially for popular harlots.

Kate Keepdown a pregnant prostitute referred to by Mistress Overdone in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (3.2.199—201).

Laïs several famous hetaerae of ancient Greece had this name—one was regarded as the most beautiful woman of her age; “Laïs” was used proverbially as a name for a woman of great pulchritude.

Messalina the dissolute wife of the Emperor Claudius of Rome; “her name has become a byword for lasciviousness.” (Brewer).

Mistress Dorothy Pistol’s alternative name for Doll Tearsheet in 2 Henry IV:

PISTOL. Then to you, Mistress Dorothy, I will charge you.

DOLL. Charge me? I scorn you, scurvy companion. What, you poor, base, rascally, cheating, lack-linen mate! Away, you mouldy rogue, away! I am meat for your master. (2.4.121—26)

Mistress Overdone another of Shakespeare’s suggestively named bawds; this procuress is introduced in Act I, scene ii of Measure for Measure.

Mistress Quickly fr. Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and The Merry Wives of Windsor (she is Hostess Quickly in the last-mentioned play); the name is perhaps a pun on “quick lay”; her malapropisms in The Merry Wives include fartuous for virtuous (2.2.94), infection for affection (2.2.111), erection for direction (3.5.39), and speciously for especially (4.5.108).

Moll Flanders known primarily as a pickpocket, she is also a character of loose sexuality who is sometimes misconceived as a harlot, though she never solicits; fr. Defoe’s novel of that name (1722).

Mrs. Warren in Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1898), the eponymous prostitute plies her trade to support her unwitting daughter.

Phryne a Greek hetaera who “acquired so much wealth that she offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes if she might put on them this inscription: ‘Alexander destroyed them, but Phryne the hetaera rebuilt them.’ ” (Brewer).

Sadie Thompson fr. the character in Rain, Somerset Maugham’s play (itself based on his short story “Miss Thompson”) in which a South Seas missionary first proselytizes the harlot Sadie Thompson, and then prostitutes her; he kills himself in anguish and remorse.

Thaïs an Athenian hetaera of the 4th century B.C. who accompanied Alexander the Great to Persia, later becoming the concubine of Ptolemy I, King of Egypt; another courtesan of this name lived in Alexandria in the 1st century B.C. and became a nun—she resisted being seduced by her converter (perhaps thereby averting for this man the fate of Sadie Thompson’s pious lover).

Theodora a Byzantine empress who, according to the Secret History of Procopius, which some historians consider a dubious source, was an actress and prostitute before her marriage to Justinian I; originally a Cyprian, she represents the reformed harlot who becomes eminently successful.

Foreignisms not fully naturalized:

bona-roba [Italian] ‘good stuff.’

chère amie [French] a euphemism.

dame de compagnie [French] ‘a lady of companionship,’ i.e., one who is paid for it.

fille de joie [French] cf. daughter of joy, pleasure girl, etc.

grisette [fr. French grisette ‘cheap gray woolen cloth often used in dresses’] ‘a working-class girl who combines prostitution with another job.’

lorette [fr. Notre Dame de Lorette, a section of Paris] ‘one of the select class of Parisian courtesans during the Second Empire’; because of this term and the ironic ambiguity of nun, the respectable Loretto Nun may invite literary double entendres.

mui-tsai [fr. Chinese for ‘younger sister’] analogous to white slave.

nymphe du pavé [French] ‘a streetwalker’; cf. nymph of the pavement, its calque.

petite dame [French] literally, ‘small woman’; akin to mignonne.

poule [French] literally, ‘a chicken, hen.’

trottoise [French] same as nymphe du pavé.

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The Jonathan David Dictionary of Popular Slang

Anita Pearl, (Jonathan David Publishers, Inc., 1980), viii + 191 pp.

There seems to be a curious dissociation between the Introduction to this dictionary, signed by the author, and the dictionary’s actual contents. The Introduction is devoted entirely to a description of American slang, while the book’s title and contents are clearly not so restricted. Most of the entries transcend regional use and those that are British are labeled so, for example, bloke, blob, yob, and rozzer.

Nor does the dissociation end there. The Introduction defines slang as “informal, non-standard language typically composed of colorful, exaggerated metaphors, newly coined words, or words and phrases that have taken on new meaning.” Yet a very large number of the entries simply do not conform to this definition. Terms like aboveboard, Afro, all-out war, anchorman, baker’s dozen, dovetail, downstage, elder statesman, hotbed, master of ceremonies, mugger, megadeaths, Middle America, machine politics, word processing unit, photo finish and typing pool can scarcely be described as “informal” or “non-standard.” They may be picturesque and etymologically interesting, but they hardly qualify as slang. They can’t even qualify as jargon or argot. They are as much a part of modern standard English as the words that make up this sentence.

Again, according to the Introduction, the author has chosen to include only “the most popular slang words and expressions of today,” whence we get the title Dictionary of Popular Slang. Yet how popular are many of the entries in this dictionary? I have misgivings about the popularity, to say nothing of the currency, of such terms as Adam’s ale, Turner (defined as ‘a German’), Zelda (‘a stupid, boring woman’), banzai (‘a cry of determination and challenge’), and hundreds of others.

According to the jacket blurb (whose author seems to have been better acquainted with the book’s contents than the writer of the Introduction), “the more than 10,000 entries selected for inclusion have been gathered from all areas of current interest—from surfing and education, from the post office and drug culture, from the worlds of crime and entertainment, from the trucking industry, from politics, from auto racing, and so on.” If, then, by “popular” the author meant usage in many areas of current interest (“all areas” seems to be slight exaggeration), a list of her source material would not only have justified her selections but would have served as very useful data for lexicographers and other researchers. Did she get her material from books and periodicals in specialized fields? Or did she get it from interviews with actual informants, from truckers, gamblers, junkies, criminals, etc.? We are not vouchsafed this information.

An examination of the entries themselves reveals much ignorance and confusion, apparently because of inexperience. A few examples should suffice. Pronunciation is never indicated, even when an entry like “Ca, n. [HOSPITAL JARGON] Cancer” cries out for it. Subject and language labels are often used where they are totally unnecessary or inapplicable: “You bet, an expression of affirmation” is labeled [GAMBLING], kowtow and yen are labeled [CHINESE], caper, defined as ‘a criminal activity,’ is labeled [CRIME]. Etymologies are given at random and arbitrarily: 88 gets one but not 86, John Bull gets one but not Jeeves. Abbreviations such as MC, MCP, and BO are defined as “acronyms” while commie is defined as “abbreviation for Communist.” And so on.

To the book’s credit, it does include some of the newer slangisms from the drug and CB radio world, such as get off my case, have one’s ears on, and Smokey-the-bear. Nevertheless it is an amateur’s compilation. The author’s background is in theater arts and French and she is a co-author of Completely Cheese: The Cheeselover’s Companion. But she loves words, has collected them lovingly, and has done her level best with them. God knows she could have done worse.

[Sol Steinmetz, Barnhart Books, Bronxville, N.Y.]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Words in Everyday Life

G.L. Brook, (Barnes & Noble, 1981), 207pp.

I have two problems with this book. The first is the outrageous price of the American edition, for the 5¼” × 8½” book cannot contain above 70,000 words (the last 35 pages are notes, bibliography, and index—and a rather scanty index, at that). The other is that the author, though writing about English, has chosen to all but ignore any American sources. Oh, yes, there are Leo Rosten (Joys of Yiddish), Greenough and Kittredge, and a handful of others (more honored in the bibliography than in the text or notes), but the preponderance of authors and scholars cited are British, as if the Americans had made little or no contribution. Not even a single American dictionary (unless you count Joys of Yiddish, which is certainly not in the same class as Webster, Worcester, Random House, American Heritage, World and other works) is so much as mentioned in the text. My reaction is prompted less by chauvinism than by the feeling that a modern work that cites among American sources nothing later than Mencken’s American Language is not only insular but stuffily old-fashioned. No book about English can, I believe, ignore the contributions made by American English, yet Brooks, Professor Emeritus of English Language and Medieval English Literature at the University of Manchester, has done just that. And the resulting work is quite lopsided.

There is nothing here that cannot easily be found elsewhere in the dozens of books published in the last two decades about the language and, indeed, in a decent etymological dictionary. The approach is sober and unutterably dull and dry. Perhaps more words are treated than in Simeon Potter’s Our Language, but that and Potter’s other books sparkled with good, interesting writing. Brooks gives the impression that he is frequently boring himself. His arid, matter-of-fact style can be seen in the following, mercifully brief passage, typical of the book and selected more or less at random:

Elevation of meaning is less common than degeneration. We sometimes find divergent changes, with two words of similar meaning developing in opposite directions. Childish and juvenile have sunk; child-like, boyish and youthful have risen. Service is something that we are proud to render, but servility is a quality that we do not want to possess.

Readers who do not expect more than this—the essential facts of language and exemplary etymologies merely written out at length instead of being presented in the telegraphic form of a reference book—will not be disappointed. As for this reviewer, I can see nothing wrong in presenting the same old material, but I insist that a new work should reflect something new and should, at least, be interestingly written. Alas, Brooks’s book may do more to destroy a budding interest in language than to nurture it.

—Laurence Urdang

Philip Howard on English English: Halcyon

Philip Howard

I stirred up fuss and feathers the other day in The Times with a piece about halcyons. Those goddamned birds are everywhere on this side of the Atlantic. Halcyon is the hottest vogue word for journalists and politicians who want to be with it: it is as contagious as foul pest. In a few months we shall grow bored with it and move on to something else. But for the moment, everything is halcyon.

As often with words that suddenly become fashionable, it is changing its meaning slightly as it is popularized. People like the look of the shiny new word, pick it up, and start using it without making sure exactly what it means, so vexing pedants and providing amusement and copy for those of us who observe and record the changing language. It is evident that many of those now using halcyon to add a touch of class to their writing or speaking take the word to mean something like ‘in the good old days.’ I was finally moved to write the original piece about halcyons by a letter in The Times that spoke of 1879 as a halcyon year. I looked it up in my dictionary of dates, and I found that it was the year the War of the Pacific began, when Chilean forces occupied the Bolivian coast; British breech-loading rifles wiped out the Zulu nation; and Mary Baker Eddy chartered the Church of Christ Scientist at Boston. And apart from all that, it was a terrible summer.

I said that I doubted whether 1879 could be classified as a halcyon year in the extreme acceptance of the word, without some risk of terminological inexactitude. Apart from vexing our native Christian Scientists, the article provoked some instructive correspondence. I had a charming letter from a Mrs. Halcyon McLaren, which we published with the headline “Shall I call thee bird?” I suppose the answer to that question is that Mrs. McLaren was a Wren in the war. Somebody sent me the advertising pamphlet for a brand of Citizens' Band radio, which is just starting to wash over the United Kingdom, interfering with police and medical communications and infecting the language with its curious jargon. The pamphlet says: “For CB’ers who want something a little more advanced, the HALCYON CONDOR is on its way”: a flying oxymoron, if ever I saw one.

Somebody sent me an interesting classical variant on the original myth of Halcyon or Alcyone. I had sketched the version in which Alcyone grieves so deeply over her husband, who has been drowned at sea, that the gods take pity and turn them both into kingfishers, or halcyons. These were said to nest on the sea for seven days every winter, during which time the waters remain calm: the halcyon days of sailors. My correspondent reminded me of the other version of the myth in Ovid, in which Halcyon is so much in love with her husband that she commits an act of hubris by calling herself Hera and him Zeus. This naturally vexes the Olympian Zeus, who sends a thunderstorm to drown Ceyx, the husband. Alcyone, or Halcyon, is so upset that she jumps into the sea and drowns herself. Some pitying god turns them both into kingfishers, or, according to a variant, Alcyone into a kingfisher and Ceyx into a seagull. The gods still make the seas calm for them to nest at the winter solstice—hence your halcyon days.

The story is, of course, partly guano. The legend of the kingfisher’s floating nest has no foundation in natural history. The halcyon builds no kind of nest at all, but lays its eggs in holes by the waterside. However, myth is not nonsense. It expresses ritual and religious truth. The Halcyon myth refers to the birth of the new sacred king at the winter solstice—after the queen, who represents his mother, the Moon Goddess, has conveyed the old king’s corpse to a sepulchral island. Or so says Robert Graves, and I potently and powerfully believe him.

This may seem a bit esoteric in light of the modern vogue use of halcyon to mean ‘in the good old days, when I was young and you could buy a four-course dinner with wine for half a crown.’ But it is interesting as an example of a word in the process of changing its meaning. It shows what we have lost now that the classics and classical mythology are no longer generally taught in British schools. It is impossible to get the most out of Western literature and art without knowing about birds like Halcyon. I dug out references and allusions to her in poets from Milton to T.S. Eliot. But, in the meantime, things are pretty halcyon on this side of the kingfisher pond.

EPISTOLA {Otto Jansen}

On the side panel of a package of Kellogg’s Raisins, Rice & Rye—amazingly, not “Rice ‘n’ Rye”—we are told about “Great recipes you can bake up with Kellogg’s Raisins, Rice & Rye.” After a few words about the fantastic ingredients (“crispy rice” and “hearty rye”), we are told that if we follow the directions on the back panel, we can bake up two delicious recipes. Why do we have to put up with this latest pleonastic atrocity? Where will it end? fry up? grill up? roast up?

[Otto Jansen, Hopewell, New Jersey]

[We already have fry up: Ebenezer, Ah’m gonna frah up a mess o' chitlins fo' yo' dinna! In keeping with the current trend to folk rock, country music, etc., I suppose those wunnerful folks at Kellogg’s jes' decided to use that ol' down-to-earth approach that meks Grandmaw set down her corncob an' start chompin' away on the flakes.—Editor.]

EPISTOLA {Perry C. Hill}

Relative to your interest in uses and misuses of alleged, the following is from the recently revised edition (February 1980) of The Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel Stylebook:

ALLEGE The word must be used with great care. Some guidelines:

Avoid any suggestion that the writer is making an allegation. Specify the source of the allegation. In a criminal case, it should be an arrest record, an indictment or the statement of a public official connected with the case.

Use alleged bribe or similar phrase when necessary to make it clear that an unproved action is not to be treated as fact. Be sure that the source of the charge is specified elsewhere in the story.

Avoid redundant uses of alleged. It is proper to say: “The district attorney alleged that she took a bribe.” Or: “The district attorney accused her of taking a bribe.” But not: “The district attorney accused her of allegedly taking a bribe.”

Do not use alleged before an event that is known to have occurred when the dispute is over who participated in it. Do not say: “He attended the alleged meeting” when what you mean is: “He allegedly attended the meeting.”

Do not use alleged as a routine qualifier. Instead, use a word such as apparent, ostensible or reputed.

[Perry C. Hill, Tucson, Arizona]

EPISTOLA {Milton Schorr}

Thank you, Michael Gorman, for exposing us to the Fonseca English phrase-book. I haven’t laughed that heartily at printed matter since Leo Rosten’s The Education of HYMAN KAPLAN* rendered me a limp, howling mess many years ago. I read the Fonseca piece on the subway between West 4th St. and 42nd St. in Manhattan, and I guffawed so uncontrollably that I was certain that one or more of my fellow passengers had wired ahead to have me picked up at the next station and delivered forthwith to a proper mental health facility.

Rosten’s HYMAN KAPLAN had much in common with Fonseca. Both were sublimely assured that they had mastered the English language conversationally, lexicographically, and syntactically. HYMAN KAPLAN, the immigrant night school student, bristled at the frequent suggestions that he might be in error (particularly when the suggestor was his ever-correct classmate, Miss Mitnick). Fonseca’s confidence in his imagined mastery was so supreme that he set out to enlighten the non-English-speaking world with his publication. I for one am thankful that nobody ever corrected Mr. Fonseca (or that, if they did, he chose to ignore them), for then the world would have been denied his delicious “fracturepiece.”

The excerpts from the Fonseca work also brought to mind the English instructions generally enclosed with a foreign-made appliance. As a professional magician who buys many tricks and gadgets made in Japan, West Germany, and South America, I often find it necessary to decipher the accompanying instructions. These are obviously written with the aid of nothing more than a dictionary. As a result, one frequently finds inappropriately used synonyms for the proper word. The resulting statements are far more humorous than offensive. Some examples:

The box is made quintet, that is fivefolded.

Use an impalpable paste of a liquid to polish silver.

All this will be achieved taking more or less to the vertical the tricky saltcellar.

Be sure that this final is of an incredible success.

Put the bill into the tube (to say the truth, into the gimmick).

Say, “All this effect is worthwhile a handshake.”

Practice this by yourself seeing in a mirror.

It’s totally hermetic. Therefore it’s damp-proof.

The magic tube, an unprecedented and newest magic.

I must be off now to track down a copy of “English as she is spoke.” I am determined to succeed.

[Milton Schorr, Syosset, New York]

Antipodean English: More Colorful Language

George W. Turner

Some Australians might take the term “colorful language” to promise a discussion of the Great Australian Adjective, the word bloody, which Australians are popularly supposed to work into every sentence and even, though it might seem imbloodypossible, into the middle of words. But what I have in mind is a further exploration, with relation to Australian English, of the kind of semantic associations of color terms that were discussed by Sterling Eisiminger in VERBATIM [VI, 1].

The positive connotations of white recur with exaggerated force in Australia and New Zealand where, at least in older usage, a (real) white man was the highest commendation. The New Zealand poet R.A.K. Mason catches the idiom in his satirical poem Judas Iscariot, where Judas is described as “the veriest prince of good fellows and the whitest and merriest.” Cheap labour from the Pacific Islands and Asia was a threat to the living standards of Australian workers in the nineteenth century, and so a policy, called the White Australia policy, of excluding immigrants not of European race was widely adopted, though it is now generally disowned. A more sinister association of white comes from the destructive termites, white ants. These insects can quickly eat out timber, leaving a paper-thin outer shell. Politicians have sometimes seized on a metaphor (powerful especially to property owners) to white-ant institutions or a way of life ‘to subvert them secretly from within.’ (Such ‘black villains’ are usually ‘reds.') Color names not infrequently turn up in the names of drinks: white lady is methylated spirits, pure or mixed with something else. In sport to whitewash ‘to defeat utterly’ is shared with the U.S., and the man in white is the referee. For flora and fauna, the pretty little white-eye (also called silver-eye, blight-bird, etc.) may stand for many more items.

Black retains in Australia the negative associations it had in Europe. Days of devastating bushfire are remembered as Black Saturday (in New South Wales), Black Thursday (in Victoria), etc. The simile as black as a burnt log and perhaps black stump ‘mythical marker of extreme distance’ in the phrase beyond the black stump recall fire-scarred landscape. Racial associations of black with the Aboriginal population are respectful enough in black tracker but shameful in black velvet (Aboriginal women considered as sex objects). Associations are neutral or pleasant in blackjack ‘treacle,’ blackball ‘a black and white striped peppermint sweet,’ though perhaps faintly pejorative in black taxi ‘a Commonwealth Government car providing free transport for politicians and public servants’ and black hat, now obsolete, ‘a newly arrived immigrant inexperienced in the ways of the colony’ (and still wearing city clothes). Flora and fauna again provide a large number of examples of new formations; for black, the index to the Australian Encyclopaedia (1966) has two and a half columns listing phrases alone, and there are many compounds as well. Among the more interesting of these are blackboy, also called grass-tree, a black-boled liliaceous tree with a spearlike flowerstalk and reedlike leaves resembling fuzzy hair or a grass skirt (but in New Zealand the same word refers to a type of peach), and black swan, a descriptive term. The presence of black swans in Australia indirectly explains the name White Swan Reservoir in Ballarat. A type of ant is the blackhead (other types being greenheads, blueheads, redheads, and green-tree ants), and a type of cicada, the black prince (other types being the greengrocer, yellow Monday and yellow Tuesday; there is also a green Monday, the origin of these names being, apparently, by folk etymology, a name of an Aboriginal, mentioned by Captain Watkin Tench in 1791 as Yel-lo-mun-dee, later applied, as Yellow Monday, to a creek near Parramatta).

In Australia as elsewhere, blue has proved rich in associations. A blue or bluey may be a ‘summons, especially for a traffic offence’ (from the color of the paper) or a blue may be a ‘quarrel or mistake’ (made a bit of a blue) or just a ‘nickname for a red-headed person.’ The Blues are a N.S.W. Rugby League team, the Bluebags another. A bluey is a ‘blanket,’ to hump bluey ‘to carry a swag, take to the track.’ The connotation of blue sometimes seems to be derogatory; a blue duck is ‘something that fails to meet expectations, a dud,’ and a blue bird, the ‘police paddy-wagon.’ The blue devil, however, is merely a ‘thistlelike plant’ and the tone is neutral in bluetongue, a ‘lizard with a bright blue tongue,’ also, perhaps from confusion with the sleepy lizard, ‘a shed-hand on a sheep-station,’ and in blue flyer ‘the female of the red kangaroo’ and blue heeler ‘a cattle dog,’ if not blue pointer, ‘a large shark’. There is the bluebottle, a local name for the ‘Portuguese man-of-war,’ blue-eye (a fish) and bluefish, bluebush, and, of course, the bluegum. Bluestone is a ‘building-stone,’ not necessarily blue, in fact more often brown in South Australia, and in early New Zealand the blueshirts were a politically radical group, more like the ‘reds’ than the ‘blues’ of today.

Apart from flora and fauna (redbill, red bream, red cedar, red cod, red gum, etc.), red has not formed many new associations in Australia. Perhaps most notable is the Red Centre, describing the red-clay interior of Australia. There is a note of danger in the name of the redback spider, though it is also descriptive: it is the katipo of New Zealand, related to the American black widow. Danger again motivates the names red steer or red bull for a bushfire. There is political connotation in the red-feds ‘members of the Red Federation in New Zealand early this century,’ but not in the red page the ‘literary page of the Bulletin,’ actually colored red or pink, in the period of nationalist consciousness late last century. A fish called nannygai was renamed redfish, and this name has proved popular enough to improve its sales, but a green tiger prawn was renamed grooved tiger prawn because green suggested an uncooked prawn.

Yellow has racial associations in yeller feller, a probably obsolete name for a male half-caste, but is otherwise confined to flora and fauna (yellow-tail, yellow-belly, both fishes, and yellow-jacket, naming various eucalypts.)

Green gives rise to green bans, which are black bans imposed by unions for environmentalist reasons. Those who support such actions are greenies (a name also applied to various Australian birds). The green cart is the ‘van supposed to take people to the mental asylum.’ Greenfeed is forage fed fresh to livestock. The green-leek is a parrot and the Galloping Greens a football team.

Purple undergoes no changes here, except that purple patch is sometimes used to refer to a run of success or good form. Neither are there new associations for orange except in names for flora and fauna, such as orange chat or orange-bark (from the color of its inner bark).

Grey enters into greybark, a ‘large beetle attacking sugar-cane,’ grey box (various trees), and grey nurse a ‘nasty shark.’ The Hexham greys are mosquitoes of exceptional size, associated with a place in New South Wales. A grey meanie (in Victoria) or a grey ghost (in New South Wales) is a ‘parking policeman’: the name is from the color of the uniform; earlier, the Sydney traffic warden was dressed in brown and known as a brown bomber.

Brown and grey are among the more “developed” colors appearing at a later stage of technical advance. In New Guinea Pidgin, brown is likely to be referred to as arakain ret ‘another kind of red’ and grey hair is waitpela gras, etymologically ‘white grass.’ In Australian English, brown appears in the dangerous brown snake, brownie a ‘bush cake with currants and brown sugar,’ the obsolete brown a ‘penny,’ and browntop a ‘pasture grass.’

Pink, apart from some nineteen flora and fauna words listed in the Australian Encyclopaedia, gives pinkie ‘cheap wine’ or ‘drink containing methylated spirits.’

Fancier words such as crimson, scarlet, rose, tawny, golden, pale yellow, bronze (even nankeen ‘buff-colored,’ appearing in the name of the nankeen night heron) enter into new words for flora and fauna, but even in these special vocabularies there are color words (e.g., chartreuse, indigo) which have no new life in Australia.

No very surprising result emerges from a study of color words in Australian English. More perhaps than we think, we are imprisoned in a set of associations formed in Europe and especially Britain, though possibly there has been some shifting of connotations of approval towards the red end of the spectrum as the language has been brought from “England’s green and pleasant land” to the “wide brown land” of Australia.

The Head of Coty’s Wife

Murry Harris, White Plains, New York

It began years ago, at the dinner table. My sister, Florence, aged ten, had just returned from a summer at camp. She started an anecdote with, “One Sunday, a girl in my bunk’s mother came up and…”

Florence couldn’t finish the story until I had teased her about her bunk’s mother. Although it became a family joke, we forgot about it eventually. That is, until some sort of genes took over; the trait resurfaced after a couple of decades. We were driving to the beach with Florence’s daughter, now aged ten herself. As we crossed the bridge to Atlantic Beach, she looked out at the unfamiliar neighborhood and said, “I wonder where’s the kids who live around here’s school.”

Soon after that, I was calling for a friend, en route to dinner. As I helped her on with her coat, she began describing her day at the office. “I’m working on an interview with Lily Daché,” she said. “Did you know that she’s the head of Coty’s wife?”

My recollection of grammatical designations was a bit hazy. I vaguely remembered my English teacher’s reference to past imperfect and future subjunctive. The only term I could come up with for this trait was retarded possessive.

Soon, the usage came naturally. I was describing holiday weekends in a wooded area of Eastern Massachusetts. “We used to go into the general store in Buzzard’s Bay on Labor Day,” I said, “to buy the day before’s New York Times.”

Apparently, I was not the only collector of the late, late apostrophe. H. Allen Smith, always one to savor language quirks, reached ‘way back to the network radio era. Colonel Stoopnagle and Budd, he wrote, had also fancied the construction and devised this for one of their broadcasts: “That man over there is the woman whose penthouse we went up to the other night’s brother-in-law.”

Now, what I’d really like to learn is the people who usually get to read this quarterly’s reactions.

EPISTOLA {David L. Gold}

I agree with Charles Bremer [IV, 2] that “unfortunately, our language in its present state is far from an ideal system of symbols, growing as it has from an array of northern European and Romance languages with a sprinkling of American Indian, Yiddish, and a few dozen other languages” and that “therefore, steps must be taken now to purify and distill our language…” As a first step, I propose the removal of such foreignisms as American, international, language, eventual, means, people, exchange, idea, mutual, unfortunate, present, state, ideal, system, symbol, array, European, Romance, Indian, dozen, mixture, tend, develop, extensive, lexicon, complicate, degree, endanger, use, purify, distill, accurate, country, effort, communication, interest, support, Charles, city, and Oregon (all taken from his letter).

[David L. Gold, University of Haifa]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The Bible Almanac

J.I. Packer, M.C. Tenney, Wm. White, Jr., eds., (Thomas Nelson, 1980), 765 pp. incl. index.

The editors of this volume state that its purpose, as understood by both the eleven major and the thirty-five supplemental contributors (plus four editorial consultants and two project coordinators) is “to present in plain terms the information that is most helpful in interpreting the Bible accurately” (p. 13). That “accurately” means “conservatively” is made clear from the beginning editorial introductions right through to the end of the final article. The effort to defend such a viewpoint in light of both intra- and extra-Biblical evidence occupies many lines of text. The bulk of the Almanac consists of forty-six topical articles: “The Ancient World,” “Plants and Herbs,” “Money and Economics,” “Family Relationships,” “Food and Eating Habits,” “Music,” and the like. The articles are supplemented by many interesting maps, charts, and pictures. Some of the color plates are stunning. Authors of individual articles are not identified, and footnotes referring to other published works are rare, those to major scholarly resources virtually absent. Protestant in orientation, the authors use the King James translation as normative and give little attention to the Apocrypha, regarded as canonical by Roman Catholics.

The forty-six articles are of rather uneven quality. Some of them are well done. “Language and Writing” is well and carefully written, and “Archaeology” is also one of the better treatments. “The Egyptians” gives judicious treatment to its subject matter, and, given the limitations imposed by a conservative-fundamentalist outlook, the section “The Literature of the Bible” is useful.

Other sections are less valuable. “The Geography of Palestine” has too many errors (e.g., p. 197, 7 to 15 cm is said to equal 36 to 60 inches, 26 km² to equal 68 square miles; p. 196, referring to Hosea 6:4: “Yet the dew evaporates quickly, and it became proverbial to compare Israel’s faithfulness to dew”—clearly “faithlessness” is meant; p. 201, referring to 2 Kings 6:1-7: “Elisha made an iron axe handle float on the river”—it was an axe head; p. 205, in reference to Acts 8:1-6: “When the early church was persecuted in Jerusalem and all the apostles scattered”—a close look at Acts 8:1 shows all fled “except the apostles”). Such errors are unfortunately far too prevalent in this Almanac; one could fill a review of this length simply by identifying them.

Another section, “The Poetry of the Bible,” contains disturbing contradictions (p. 371, paragraph 5: “The Book of Psalms stands apart from any other poetic literature of the ancient Near East”; same page, paragraph 2: “The artistic style of Biblical poetry closely resembles Ugaritic and Babylonian poetry”; p. 372: “The language of the Psalms resembles the poetry of the ancient city of Ugarit”; or again, p. 362, paragraph 1: “Paul’s epistles (as the rest of the New Testament epistles) are unique literary productions. They differ from all letter forms found in extra-Biblical literature”; same page, paragraphs 2 and 3 describe the “literary form” of “extra-Biblical letters”; same page, paragraph 4: “Paul’s letters follow this general structure”). Such contradictions are also unfortunately far too prevalent in this volume; one could fill another review of this length simply by identifying them.

The section on “Forms of Government” is simplistic and limited in view. There is nothing in it on the form of theocratic covenant on which Israel based its life as a nation and on which Hittite archaeology has thrown a flood of light. The section on “Marriage and Divorce” would have profited from a survey of contemporary extra-Biblical customs, especially in light of Mark 10:12, where a woman divorcing her husband was in total contradiction to the law of Moses (cf. p. 438). These and other sections are little more than a catalog of pertinent Biblical materials, with no references to other contemporary cultural practices.

It is the many annoying errors and contradictions, however, that make the Almanac less valuable than it otherwise might have been. Some errors are probably owing to careless editing (e.g., p. 232, the Greek word for ‘dove,’ peristera, is wrongly given as periatera; p. 356, cosmogony ‘the story of the birth of the cosmos’ is defined as though it were theogony ‘a biography of the gods’; p. 587, Chapter 5 is simply omitted from the outline of Paul’s epistle to the Romans). Others are more serious, particularly in a volume that takes the Bible seriously as history. For example, there are historical errors. On p. 173, we read that the Maccabean revolt began when “only a few men escaped into the hills under Judas Maccabeus.” In fact, the revolt began under his father, Mattathias Hashmon; Judas was the third of his five sons. The facts are correctly given elsewhere (pp. 177, 409), but how is the nonexpert to know which account is true? Again, referring to Herod’s Temple (begun in 20 B.C.), we learn: “In fact, some scholars feel the new temple had not been completed at the time Jerusalem fell to the Roman general Pompey in A.D. 63” (p. 409). In fact, Pompey took Jerusalem in 63 B.C. It was Titus who took Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the event to which the author apparently wanted to refer.

Along with historical, there are Biblical errors. For example, we are told (p. 521): “Christ ascended into heaven (John 24:49-53)”. John has only 21 chapters; apparently the reference was intended to be Luke 24:49-53. That ought to have been caught in editing, as also the incorrect Luke 4:30-39, cited on p. 515 (right column, near the bottom). The correct reference is Luke 5:33-39. More serious are the errors that arise from an apparent ignorance of the content of the Bible, where speculation is substituted for what the Bible actually says. For example (p. 219): “This explains why Jesus’ disciples rebuked the woman who broke an alabaster vessel of perfume and poured the perfume upon Jesus’ head (Mark 14:3). The disciples felt she was wasting a precious scent that could have been enjoyed for years.” Yet Mark says specifically (14:4-5) that the disciples rebuked her because the perfume could have been sold (for 300 denarii) and given to the poor. In some instances, one wonders if the author has even bothered to read Scripture. For example (p. 506): “Jesus' teachings about a person’s diet (Mark 7:1-9), respect for elders (Mark 7:10-13) and Sabbath keeping (Matt. 12:24-32) agreed with the teachings of the Pharisees.” In each instance cited, Jesus is attacking, explicitly, the view of the Pharisees on those matters. Such errors, which occur with alarming frequency, are hard to understand on the part of authors who claim to take Scripture with utmost seriousness.

In sum, a good idea, a Biblical almanac, is badly flawed by too many errors, contradictions, wrong references, speculations stated as fact (e.g., “John the Baptist was a Nazarite,” p. 513; “Matthew 23:23 mentions certain spices as antacids,” p. 464), and poor editing that ought to have caught many of these errors. When accurate material is interspersed with the inaccurate, how is the layperson, for whom this almanac was written, to distinguish between the two? For an “accurate interpretation” of Scripture, this particular almanac, despite its lovely color plates, will be of less help than one would have hoped.

[Paul J. Achtemeier, Jackson Professor of Biblical Interpretation Union Theological Seminary in Richmond]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Room’s Dictionary of Distinguishables

Adrian Room, (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 132 pp.

English has the richest word hoard of any language, yet it possesses few exact synonyms. Gorse, furze, and whin are usually cited as true synonyms, being three different names for the plant Ulex europaeus. However, the perceptive British listener can detect which part of the country a man (or woman) comes from, and perhaps also which social class he belongs to, by which of the three words he uses. And whin is also used to describe other thorny plants with yellow flowers. I am not sure that the British English pavement is an exact synonym for the American sidewalk. With such a huge lexicon of delicately shaded near-synonyms to choose from, the best writers and speakers will take pains to select exactly the right word for the job they have in mind. As the Duchess said to Alice: “Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.”

This new sort of dictionary is intended to help us in the selection of the right word from the vast choice available. Two years ago Adrian Room published his Dictionary of Confusibles (Routledge & Kegan Paul, £4.95), distinguishing between pairs or larger groups of words that look alike, sound alike, are sometimes spelt alike, and, by golly, have a common semantic link: words like baroque and rococo, or twerp and twat. The book did well; so here is its successor, dealing with distinguishables. Distinguishables do not sound alike or look alike, but their meanings overlap, for example, midge, gnat, and mosquito, or divan and couch. Moreover, a confusible can be any part of speech, whereas Mr. Room’s distinguishables are all nouns.

The best place to find the exact meaning of a word of which one is in doubt is in a big dictionary, with citations and examples. With distinguishables one will need to look up both words and compare the meanings carefully, which will take time. And anyway not all of us have by our desks an adequate array of big dictionaries and encyclopedias for all the changes and chances of the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings. This dictionary distinguishes more than 1,300 nouns with overlapping meanings, and, where it helps, gives a little line drawing, for instance to distinguish between domes and cupolas. Sydney Smith said that “the dome of St. Paul’s has come down to Brighton and pupped” (viz. the cupolas on Brighton Pavilion). The headwords range from the simple to the abstruse. Surely every schoolboy knows the difference between billiards and pool, even if obdurate townees are not sure about the difference between a partridge and a pheasant. But can you discriminate between a type I error and a type II error in statistics? For the shaky among us, a type I error is ‘a rejection of the null hypothesis in statistical testing when it is true,’ and a type II error is ‘an acceptance of the null hypothesis in statistical testing when it is false.’ I daresay that the distinction will come in useful one day for something or other.

But there are some very pretty, witty, and fine distinctions between words that are likely to prove more useful, for example, the exact difference between a Nosy Parker, Paul Pry, Peeping Tom, and the female Rosa Dartle. Words that are simple British English equivalents for American English (lift/elevator) are not included. I am not sure that Mr. Room is as sound on his American English as his British. American readers will know better than I whether ass is really used in the United States to mean ‘sexual intercourse.’ And having dived into Webster, I see that the meaning is given there, “usually considered vulgar.” Well, well, I knew that you used it to mean bum, and arse, and that part of the body generally, but I had not realized it could mean the dirty deed itself. The distinction between producers and directors varies widely between cinema and stage over here, and I suspect that Mr. Room’s British distinctions may well be scrambled on your side of the word-pond. His distinction between morning and evening dress does not work for the States, and it is obsolescent for Britain. I regret to tell you that chaps here are wearing pullovers of many colours (jerseys? sweaters? jumpers?) with their evening dress, and sponge bag trousers, as worn by Pop (the self-electing society of prefects at Eton), have become very fashionable with that absurd rig, morning dress.

One can grumble about omissions. Wot, no distinction between meiosis and litotes, or iambus and spondee? Such grumbles reflect the personal needs and interests of the grumbler. One can find errors: the difference between tart and pie is not simply that a tart has no top crust. In the north of England and Scotland, tarts, if they contain something sweet or fruit, have top crusts. Pies, as in mutton pie, are reserved for pastry casings enclosing something savoury—and very greasy they are too. If we are going to discriminate between balcony and verandah, ought we not also to consider loggias, porches, and porticoes?

Enough churlish grumbling and whinging. It is a useful little book, generally sound and agreeably written. Those without the big lexicographical guns may keep it on their desks to bolster their vocabularies. Others can keep it by the bed or lavatory for brief entertainment and education. I am extremely chuffed at last to know the difference between appoggiatura and acciaccatura. I have been wondering about that for years.

—Philip Howard

SIC! SIC! SIC!

Stacked Noun: “Airport Long Term Car Park Courtesy Vehicle Pickup Point.” [Seen at London’s Gatwick Airport by Norman A. Heap, Trenton, New Jersey.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“DEATH NOTICES—Man 62, has nicely balanced personality, disposition & looks Seeks a Wife.” [From the Sunday Star, January 25, 1981. Submitted by I. Taubenfligel, Chicago, who comments, This marriage is certainly going to be made in heaven… we hope!]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The Word

Charlton Laird, (Simon and Schuster, 1981), xv + 332 pp.

Charlton Laird has had a long and successful career as a writer about language. The author of half a dozen popular books on the subject, including The Miracle of Language (1953) and Language in America (1970), Laird has now, at the age of eighty, produced what may be his best book yet, The Word. (If the title sounds somewhat familiar, it is because it happens also to be the title of a novel by Irving Wallace published in 1972. But there the coincidence ends. Wallace’s book is about the Christian gospels, the word made flesh; Laird’s is, of course, about real words in the more usual sense.)

Subtitled “A Look at the Vocabulary of English,” the book aims to bring together the most important observations that have been made about the English word stock. Such a book has been long overdue. For more than a century, phonology and grammar, which gave linguistics its name as a science, have dominated the field, while lexicology has been relegated to the status of a stepchild. Yet to continue to ignore the study of words and meanings is to insure that its still hidden “laws” and “deep structures” will never be revealed. In this respect, the naive speaker, who views language as essentially a sequence of words with meanings, seems to know intuitively what the language specialist has yet to discover.

The Word tackles its subject with vigor and often brilliance. Laird, Professor Emeritus at the University of Nevada, is a born teacher, with a passion for explanation and illustration. He is also a natural on the subject of words, being the compiler of Laird’s Promptory (1948), the precursor of a generation of thesauruses that replaced the various versions of Roget’s pioneer work. The name of this synonym dictionary exemplifies Laird’s intense preoccupation with words. Dissatisfied with the stilted term thesaurus, he cast about for the mot juste and happily came up with promptory (derived from a Medieval Latin word meaning ‘storehouse, repository’) as a better name for a book constructed for prompt reference and to prompt those who search for the right word. Although promptory has not yet found its way into Webster’s Third (promptuary, a poorer-sounding variant suggestive of a mortuary, has), it is a worthy and useful addition to the language; for example, good use of it was made in a recent VERBATIM book review [VII, 3, 12].

The eleven chapters of The Word cover the spectrum of lexical lore, from the word as sign and symbol to its centrality in semantic field theory and exponential analysis. Lest we forget that names were primordial words, an entire chapter is devoted to the formation of names. We learn the patterns of naming, along with explanations of countless names (Thames, York, the -ham in Birmingham, Nottingham, etc.). In subsequent chapters, we trace the development of the English vocabulary back to Proto-Indo-European, discover the ways and means of lexical borrowing, explore the world of semantic change, and learn about the shaping of words, the morphology and grammar of words, fashions in words, and the way various linguistic theories deal with words and meanings. An appendix includes a “tool kit” for studying English words and a concise discussion of phonemic symbols. There is also a general index, an index of terms, and a list of dictionaries, usage books, and vocabulary studies for reading and reference.

As a popularizer, Laird skillfully blends old and new knowledge about words. He easily makes the leap from Sir William Jones’s founding of comparative linguistics to the latest archaeological findings about the Kurgan ancestors of the Indo-Europeans. An attempt to define language and word touches off a discussion of current experiments with chimpanzees using sign language. There are a few regrettable omissions. In discussing American dialects and the Linguistic Atlas of New England, the opportunity to describe the very important, almost completed Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) project is missed. Similarly, references are made to sociolinguistics and psycholin-guistics, but generative grammar, which deals with the lexicon in a special way, is not mentioned.

But these are minor faults in a book that gives the reader a well-rounded picture of the role of the word in language. Interest in the English vocabulary, both here and abroad, is perhaps at its summit. The appearance in recent years of several books of new words such as The Barnhart Dictionary of New English since 1963 (BDNE), The Second Barnhart Dictionary of New English, and Merriam-Webster’s 6,000 Words attests to the current explosion of the English vocabulary. Professor Laird makes use of a sampling of entries in the BDNE to gauge the relative frequencies of various types of word formation in present-day English (pp. 228-229). While he finds the BDNE sampling generally representative, he deplores what he considers to be an inadequate representation of phrasal sequences such as go public and let it all hang out, and goes on to reprimand the BDNE for not being “hospitable to phrasal sequences.” As one of the editors of the BDNE, I must disagree with his conclusion. According to my count, 63 entries in the BDNE, or somewhat over one percent of its approximately 5,000 entries, are verbal phrases such as tell it like it is, come up roses, wind down, and cop out. This seems to be a pretty respectable number. But perhaps more important, in the absence of comparative data for the decades before 1963, we cannot in all fairness judge whether a particular lexical type is adequately represented in a corpus limited to the decade 1963-73.

Charlton Laird has set out in The Word to write a book that is both serious and engaging. For this reader, he has succeeded admirably.

[Sol Steinmetz, Bronxville, New York]

OBITER DICTA: A Punctuation Parable

Lawrence Casler, 65 Woodland Road Pittsford, New York 14534

When I give a talk on behalf of SAGE (the Society for the Advancement of Good English), I frequently begin with the story of a man who was asked to speak at a public gathering and who decided to prepare his own introduction. He wrote the following, with the request that the master of ceremonies use it without making any changes: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you a man among men. He is out of place when among cheaters and scoundrels. He feels quite at home when surrounded by persons of integrity. He is uncomfortable when not helping others. He is perfectly satisfied when his fellow human beings are happy. He tries to make changes in order for this country to be a better place. He should leave us this evening with feelings of disgust at ineptitude and a desire to do better. I present to you Mr. John Smith.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Smith or his secretary made a number of errors in punctuation, so that the master of ceremonies found himself reading the following: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you a man. Among men, he is out of place. When among cheaters and scoundrels, he feels quite at home. When surrounded by persons of integrity, he is uncomfortable. When not helping others, he is perfectly satisfied. When his fellow human beings are happy, he tries to make changes. In order for this country to be a better place, he should leave us this evening. With feelings of disgust at ineptitude and a desire to do better, I present to you Mr. John Smith.”

This story, which so vividly illustrates the importance of proper punctuation, is not my creation. It is a reconstruction of something I read or heard as a high school student, several decades ago. I would appreciate information from readers of Verbatim concerning the identity of the story’s originator, so that I can duly credit him or her when the occasion next arises.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Hyperactivity—or, to use the term now preferred, attention deficit disorder—can continue into adolescence and adulthood.” [From a column by Dr. Neil Solomon in the Press-Herald (Portland, Maine), n.d. Submitted by Josephine Bell Trask, Damariscotta, Maine.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“I am concerned that the BMA should state categorically that it deprecates the activities of unscrupulous members of our profession who are out for a quick kill, at the expense of the reputation of the rest of us.” [From a letter by R. Moshy, Honorary Secretary, British Medical Association, Manchester, published in The British Medical Journal, 23 May 1981. Submitted by Dr. D.B. Jack, The Medical School, University of Birmingham.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“DO NOT DRINK THE BEER HERE!” [Sign in a delicatessen on Broadway near 106th Street, New York City— one that offers a wide selection of imported beers. Submitted by Robert I. Goler, New York City.]

A Rose Could Be a Ruse or a Rouse

Jay Ames, Toronto, Canada

Nicknames in the British Armed Forces are perhaps a shade odder than most, since many attach themselves to specific surnames. Thus Smiths are always “Sudger”, Blacks can be “Darkie” or “Nigger” without any racial slurs intended—or taken. Browns are either “Bomber,” “Topper,” or “Nigger”; a few are given the soubriquet “Chocko” (‘chocolate’). Greys and Grays are named “Dolly” from the wartime song of that name, circa 1900. Greens, for some reason I was never able to uncover, begat “Dodger.” Was Fagin’s artful one a green one or surnamed Green? Whites could be “Chalky,” “Blanco,” “Snowie,” “Snowball,” or “Flarry” (‘floury’). I heard (and worked with) the odd “Inky” Pink.

Millers were “Dusty” as a general rule, as were some Lanes and Rhodes, though more Lanes were “Sandy” and the odd Rhode a “Stoney” one. Balls were “Knacker” (a slang word for ‘ballocks’ or ‘testicle’) or “Ghoolie” (an East Indian word for ‘ball’) Some Wood/Woods were “Timber,” others were “Lackry,” a word, again, from India—not to be confused with louri or lowry—a word meaning ‘lingam, penis.’ We had a Harry Lowry whose name suggested “hairy louri” and a Larry (redubbed “Louri”) O’Dowd, so named for his amatory exploits.

Clark, Clarke, and Clerk were always and forever “Nobby” or “Nobbo,” more often the former. Martins in the Navy were “Pincher” and all Westons were known as “Aggie,” however manly they were. The Martins were named for an admiral, and the Westons for Dame Agnes Weston, a well-known philanthropist and “hero” of the British Navy. Murphys are “Spud,” as Mulligans and Milligans are “Spike” to all and sundry. Warners are often as not “Plum,” for Sir Pelham W—whose first name is pronounced as “P’lam”; Welsh Davises and Davieses are “Dai,” though Lloyds, Thomases, Williamses, Morganses, and Evanses seem to be “Taffy” or “Taff” rather than “Dai” (‘dye’), both Welsh forms for David (Dewi). Most “Jocks” and “Scotties” were and are last-named Mac something or other, as “Paddy” seems to be a generic for all the Irish O' names, regardless of proper baptismals.

“Lank” is a nickname for a Lancastrian, but “Lanky” is someone ‘tall, long legged, spindly’; a “Yorkie” comes from Yorkshire; a “Geordie” is a Tynesider. “Brum” or “Brummie” is from Brummagem—modern spelling is Birmingham—in Warwickshire, which we foreigners always managed to mispronounce as “Warwick” rather than the proper “warrik-shire.”

“Shino” is a generic for bald heads or “skinheads,” as we now call them; more recently I met and worked with a “Chrome-Dome Brome” whose moniker was very aptly fitting. Among Army Signalmen, “Helio-head” was not uncommon for a “baldy,” whether he was also a Smith, Jones, Robinson, or Brown. “Wingy” is the one-armed gent, as “Gimpy” is one-legged or lame—but both outside the Services.

My own nicknames overseas were many and varied, including such oddities as “Copperknob,” “Bloodnut,” “Rustynut,” “Flame’ead,” “Fire’ead,” “Ginge,” “Ginger,” “Fuchsi,” “Roti,” “Krasny,” and “Rubio.” One co-worker dubbed me “Pincus,” though neither he nor I was a Jew. My height (or lack of it) got me tagged “Kleiner,” “Malenky,” “Chota,” “P’tit Jean,” “Titch” (‘frequent’), “Kish,” “Dinky,” “Chico,” and the like. The first name Jay was a stumbling block for many and impossible to equate with any name generally in use. So it was changed quite often to “Jason,” “Jake,” “John,” “Joe,” or their linguistic equivalents—“Yan,” “Yanni,” “Yanke,” “Yanko,” “Pepi,” “Pepino,” “Yosli,” “Yischko,” or, in Wales, “Yanto,” “Yanto-bach,” or “Shunni-bach” (‘John-boy’). Scots and Irish tended to opt for “Jaimie,” “Jemmy,” “Jummie,” or “Jimbo,” though some gave me the fuller “Seamus,” (Shay and Jay being pet forms of Seamus).

Ames was butchered into “Ah-mess,” “Ah-miss,” “Ahmos,” “Aymos,” “Aymess,” and the like, seldom “Aymz”; the closest was the English pet form “Aimsie”—on a par with “Hobbsie” for Hobbs, “Webbsie” for Webb, and “Smittie” for Smith.

For some reason I’ve never fully understood, long names are reduced to a minimum; short names are lengthened in the pet form or nicknaming process. Jay also gave rise to “Jay-jay,” “Blue-jay,” and plain “Blue.” Torontonian mothers today call their boys “Jay” when they’re actually baptised Jason, James, and even Jonathan, I’ve discovered.

Oddest, to my mind, was the “Stuka” nickname my POW dogtags (#88) earned me in German hospital during WW II. One nickname I loathed (though it is no longer applicable) was “Beachball,” at a time when I was too short for my weight. It may well have helped get me back to normal.

Japanese English

David Galef, Hyogo, Japan

There is a strange type of English practiced in Japan, following an orthography stranger than that of pidgin English: it is a weird amalgam of uncannily accurate phrases and secondary meanings copied from second-rate dictionaries. The phenomenon of Japanese English is likely to strike the eye of the tourist and expatriate alike, although those who stay longer in Japan have a far greater chance to view the linguistic catastrophe in its entirety. Where else but in Japan would one see a girl on a subway, wearing a T-shirt with the saying:

CARROT—Do you think Rabbit lives in the moon
Why Rabbit’s ear is long
Why Rabbit’s eye is red.

Or a schoolbook bag emblazoned with the following:

cat is one of popular animal in world
some people like cat same as dog which do
you prefer cat or dog?

The problem, which is widespread, is enough to make the most hardened English teacher flinch.

At first glance, one may come to the conclusion that the misspellings and errors in construction are the work of a few high-placed idiots, unfortunately in charge of a clothing company. As one moves through downtown Osaka, however, the proliferation of signs, labels, and logos in Japanese English makes one pull up short. Some are easy to catch, their meanings simply distorted by a lack of articles and a warped grammar:

Matey Bunny and Mole
You are annoying to me hear. But in your absence
I should miss you. Mole has a big nose and a little
body. Matey Bunny is proud of long ears.

Sometimes, the l and r confusion is transferred into print:

FOR ELITE—JIMY AND EMIRY—
SILHOUETTE OF TWO PEOPLE IN LOVE

Sometimes, what looks like a fair imitation is destroyed by the last line:

Lovely field—If stars dropped out of heaven
and if flowers took their place,
The sky would still look very fair
and fair earth’s face.

The Japanese like to dream ambitiously, especially in English:

‘if’ What a good Sound and possibility the word
has! Even if it is assumptve….
By patronizing ‘if’ your fantasy never be impossible
to become true some day in the
near future.

This last credo appeared on a plasticized shopping bag, a very popular item for pedestrians in Japan—and a very popular place for designers to print their Japanese English.

Japanese English can be seen on many signs, such as those of restaurants which advertise “PIZZAP.AIE” or “Cook & Tea.' It also appears on bags, T-shirts, sweatshirts, students' pencil cases, and decals of all descriptions.

CAUTION: SPECIAL HAND MADE CAKE

The Sea’s
It all starts here!
Jack and Betty. The young is free as the wind
no one will catch them forever.

After glimpsing enough of these messages, one may grasp at theories to explain the phenomenon. It is puzzling. The outsider may be surprised to learn, for instance, that the average Japanese learns English for six years; if the student goes on to college, he or she emerges with a total of ten years of English language classes. Most students may not speak English well, since most examinations emphasize reading and writing primarily, but the English test for the college entrance examination is quite rigorous. Indeed, many people in America might have a hard time passing it. Such a regimen produces the odd situation of students who know the difference between its and it’s or shall and will, but who cannot properly ask where the bathroom is. Years after the students have graduated from school, their writing ability falls to the level of their speaking ability; they have, after all, little chance to keep in practice.

Japanese English is therefore dimly remembered English rules of grammar combined with Japanese word order and lack of articles. There are no real articles in Japanese: hon means ‘book,’ ‘the book,’ ‘a book,’ or ‘many books,’ the specific meaning to be determined by the context. Then again, some sentences are extremely hard to explain, though the usual problem seems to be simple laziness. The manufacturers, if they consult a dictionary at all, run into the same mistake an elementary student gets snagged on: using a word the way its synonym should be used. “Patronizing ‘if”’ instead of “using ‘if’ ” is one such example. Or this sweatshirt legend, quite popular with adolescents:

Do sports!
Challenge Baseball.

In both cases, the verb that fits is try, a near relative of do and challenge. Even veteran users of Roget’s Thesaurus occasionally run into this problem. “Crispy Gal” and “Nobility of Ideas,” both emblems on bags, are further examples.

Other examples may be ascribed to an attempt at “Japanizing” English sentence structure or, more accurately, an attempt at creating their own sentence structure. For example, there is an ornamental tray with the phrase “Happy life in good, Tiger!” The back of a panel truck weaving through traffic advertises, “Pet is good friend.” Young students ride the train to school every morning wearing shirts that say:

We is classmates
Walk together, talk together, ect.
I’m lack of exercise, be tired out.
cigh cigh.
TAKE HAVE A WALK
TENNIS
Try single hand and how to changhands.

Misspellings also contribute their share to the confusion: “Mamy’s Beauty Saloon,” “Discotique,” and “Autnmn Sale” (someone put the u upside down).

Finally, some messages are almost inscrutable:

Again—impressions at childhood are still fresh now and if it can be met…
Chatterbox. Happiness is visiting little world.
What do you think as pleasure now
How do you think as happiness now
How do you think as freshness now.
I cannot anything
Love is a traffic signal.
Hair & Room

A colleague who teaches business English to the employees of several large companies went so far as to suggest that it was a conspiracy to sabotage the influx of foreign words into the language, somewhat like l’Académie Francaise, with its eyes shut and its brain addled. As a matter of fact, the Japanese are quite receptive to adopting American words and phrases. Romaji, or romanization of the Japanese kanji and syllabary, is quite common. There is always, however, a subtle Japanese flavor. One goes to the supermarket to buy miriku, bataa, and hamu. (The Japanese syllabary contains no consonants without vowels and has no l’s, so this transformation is undergone by milk, butter, and ham.)

At any rate, the spread of Japanese English is unstoppable, and for many foreigners, myself included, it is a source of fun, the way many Americans jot down errata in newsprint. Not all the examples in Japan are worth taking down; there are simply too many of them. Here is a sampling of the bags on the subway:

NICEST FELLOWS
JUST MET
Men’s Shop McLord’s
FASHION IN LOVING
Nice Rythmn Good Sound and Just NOW
We Are Absorbed in Sexi Rock’n Roll and
Motorcycle
Let’s Sports Violent All Day Long
A partner with your adornment
Report with fidelity
Yours truly
a likely story
The word keeps
pupping through my mind.
Japanese All-Professional Amatueur Boxing (JAPAB)
Sports! Be in it!
Jim and Bill. Paper bag. Now we are together.
Hurry up or the Church Will Be Closed and It Will Be
Unable for Us to Be Married
The exciting couple of animals

Many of the shirts and bags have to do with the fulfillment of adolescent sexual fantasies, and the last example is a double-entendre if there ever was one.

It is, of course, impossible to pin down the culprit, except to blame the school system or the English-teaching associations, of which I am a member. Frankly, though I am not an English language reactionary like Edwin Newman or John Simon, I do feel a responsibility to teach a “correct” way of saying things. And, of course, the main problem is simply the ignorance that any problem exists. I knew I would get nowhere crusading when, on my first day of teaching, I was handed a bag in which to put my teaching materials. The bag had a picture of a moose, under which was written:

ACTIVITY
Artistic Buauty
Excellent
Enjoy Youthbul Days With Glee and Brave!
Youre Only Young One Do Everything You Wont.
With glee and brave, I enter the subway every morning
and go to teach.

MISSQURINTS

From a bifocled Compositor, actually, Egdon H. Margo, Reseda, California.

Joshua fit the battle of Geritol.

Happily even after.

Workers arise! You have nothing to lose but your chairs!

To each his owl.

Remember the fable of the asshopper and the grant.

Dime is money.

Look stranger—there ain’t enough room in this gown for the two of us.

Lightning never strikes mice.

If a man bites a dog, that is booze.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to shave a thankless child.

Behind every good moan—there’s a woman.

Cast thy bread upon the waiters.

You only get what you pray for.

We’re looking for people who like to writhe

A fool and his monkey are soon parted.

The frog comes in on little cat feet.

Little Miss Muffet spat on her tuffet.

Prosperity is just around the coroner.

Gold helps those who help themselves.

I’d rather bet right than be President.

Breading maketh a full man.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“You don’t cut off your nose to spoil your face.” [Quoted in The New York Times, Business Section, September 6, 1981. Submitted by Paul M. Lloyd, Secane, Pennsylvania. Indeed, why bother otherwise?]

Freud and the Gentiles

John Edwards, St. Francis Xavier University

In the Spring 1981 number of VERBATIM, Professor W.C. Hendley presented an entertaining essay on student errors and solecisms gleaned from his marking of their papers. The professor is quite correct when he notes that some members of the academic brotherhood share his hobby. I, for one, have been collecting gems from students' papers for some years. The special piquancy here is that many of these are psychologically revealing. Indeed, all of my finds derive from psychology papers; most are from a course I have taught for several years on personality theories, while others come from introductory and social psychology courses. The least entertaining are mere mistakes. The real gems shine because they demonstrate interesting, one might sometimes say Freudian, slips and transpositions.

For example, in a comment that is either an unfavorable slur on behaviorism or an accurate description of its shortcomings, depending upon your point of view, one student recently wrote that “personality is learned through the parings of stimulus and response.” Another remark, in an essay on altered modes of consciousness, was that “hypnosis is an awkward state of awareness”—a comment that will surely be understood by stage magicians and others, and which would have been applauded by Freud himself. The first psychoanalyst, early in his career, rejected hypnosis as a “coarsely interfering method”; perhaps the student here was being more perspicacious than he knew.

On the Freudian theme itself, several good finds have come from students' attempts to explain the notion of psychosexual stages. Simple confusion is shown in the following: “The next stage is the oral stage; the child is now beginning to notice its genitals. However, this doesn’t mean a child can be aroused by exotic stimulation.” Apart from the “exotic” for “erotic,” which is possibly an improvement on the original, we have here only an unfortunate amalgamation of the first and third psychosexual stages. But the next comment is, I feel, a true Freudian gem: “The phallic stage is the stage where we become interested in our gentiles. We find we receive pleasure from simple manipulation of the gentiles. We don’t realize at this age that this is known as masturbation.” If we did, I suppose we wouldn’t do it, for fear of going blind. However, the slip here surely has Freudian overtones. Could it be that “manipulation of the gentiles” is a subjective reaction to Freud’s entire theory? Is it a thinly veiled anti-Semitic slur? On the other hand, is it an equally veiled mark of approbation for Freud, whose acceptance was made no easier by his Viennese Jewishness? As with all classic Freudian slips, the true message is maddeningly elusive. But the speaker has, unwittingly or not, suggested a rich lode to be mined by students of Freud and his sociocultural context.

Freud’s notions of homosexuality are reflected, albeit inaccurately, in the following two statements: “Homosexuality is practically the same as heterosexuality” and “There are no real causes to homosexuality.” What a wealth of meaning is carried in the one word “practically.” While in line with some modern sentiments, these statements would surely give Freud pause. On the same theme, another student scores an undoubted hit with the note that “in bigger cities, homosexuality is greater than in smaller places.” Just how, though, are we to understand “greater” in this context?

Two final comments on Freudian insight are worth mentioning here. The first is that “Freud believed that the way in which the child was toilet-trained depended upon his personality in later years.” A simple error, or an affirmation of the metaphysical circularity of life? If the latter, is the student mistaking Freud for Jung? The last comment here is essentially unanalyzable, but surely provocative: “Freud looked upon females as he did castrated males.” It is only unfortunate that the records do not tell us precisely how many castrated males were examined by the great man.

Jung comes in for some attention too. One student astutely remarks that “with his analytic school of psychology, Jung went off on a different fork.” And how far did this take him, we might ask? Or is this a reference to differences in the use of cutlery among the elite of personality theorizing? Again, there are fascinating possibilities here for the student of Jungian ephemera. We also appreciate the remark that “Jung’s archetypes were different than his phototypes,” thereby learning of Jung’s interest in photography. To catch a fleeting glimpse of the collective unconscious, perhaps, or to encapsulate something of the racial memory on slides?

Introductory psychology always provides interesting examples of slips and sprawls, but, because beginners are involved, it is not fair to repeat everything that could be held against the students. Here I shall present just a few examples in which the error is more intriguing than first it seems. For example. “IQ tests are culture pacific” could be a mere mistake or a profound analysis of the whole cross-cultural standardized-testing movement. Or consider the following: “Social roles are found in everyday living. As Shakespeare said, every man is a stage.” Perhaps, in the light of modern social theorizing, this is a wise expansion of the bard’s observation. While an individual struts about the world, he is also a world unto himself. Consider this penetrating comment on group initiation and religion:

…this may explain why games requiring skill, such as hockey, baseball, golf and skydiving, are more popular with many people than is church. If a difficult initiation test was added to baptism, more people would feel church worthwhile.

Or, this slightly warped view of what makes a good test:

One of the major characteristics would be that the questions asked or the problems posed would be stated so that they do not influence the recipient’s answers.

Another student might, unfortunately, have been cleverer than he knew when he wrote that “when a person becomes psychic they cut out a certain part of his brain.” On the same subject, another student wrote of lobotomy that “the operation is called libido because part of the limbs are removed from the brain.” And again, “lobotomy is an operation that removes figments of your brain.” Figments for segments (which would not have been correct itself, incidentally) is a slip that conjures up more than it removes in error.

Lastly here, to show no prejudice, are some instances of social psychological analysis. The first is a broadside against an interfering neighbor. “Sociopath: deals with sociology and the path it takes in one’s life.” We all know that sociologists are the unrigorous relations of psychologists, but to think that things have gone this far! Writing of comparative studies of aggression, a student easily disposed of one of the leaders in the field: “Berkowitz is quick to comment, and his thoughts on aggression in the animal kingdom are unapproachable.” This same Berkowitz believes, apparently, that “ethologists have a tendency to put all their eggs in one basket.” What a charmingly appropriate way to criticize the students of animal behavior. Finally, on the beauty-is-skin-deep notion, a student provides the last word: “Attractive people are sometimes attracted to each other on the basis of their attractiveness alone.”

As I hope to have shown, student errors are sometimes more than egregious mistakes. They often, in fact, make the reader think harder than he would have if confronted with a more correct response. Therefore, to add to Professor Hendley’s comments, the fringe benefits go beyond mere entertainment. They may include psychological insights that are not the less compelling simply because neither questioner nor student respondent is aware of them. These, as Freud would have said, are often the best kind.

EPISTOLA {W.M. Woods}

Dr. Harold J. Ellner’s article, “Pleonasties” [VII, 4], struck a sympathetic chord. As he might have said, pleonasms are ubiquitously omnipresent everywhere, as well as redundant. Many of his examples might be termed technical, or specialist pleonasms.

There is a type of technical pleonasm that occurs when the media attempt to explain something technical to the layman. The examples that follow illustrate this class:

radioactive plutonium. To distinguish it from the nonradioactive kind?

explosive methane gas. Doubly pleonastic: not only is all methane explosive (under the right conditions), but the unqualified mention of methane implies a gas.

highly toxic hydrogen cyanide. That’s the worst kind.

nonflammable helium.

corrosive hydrochloric acid.

It requires some technical knowledge to recognize some of these as pleonasms. It is not pleonastic to speak of radioactive iodine because I(127), the naturally occurring isotope, is not radioactive; the term therefore refers to any of the other 23 isotopes known at present, all of which are radioactive. Potassium presents a subtle problem. The ordinary, naturally occurring form of potassium is mildly radioactive. It contains 0.0118 atom-% of K(40), which has a half-life of about a billion years. But the remainder of natural potassium, consisting of the isotopes K(39) and K(41), are stable and nonradioactive.

Is it then pleonastic to speak of “radioactive potassium”? Strictly, it is, if natural potassium is referred to; in principle, however, it would be possible to remove the K(40) from natural potassium, making it nonradioactive. Thus, it would not be pleonastic to speak of radioactive potassium if such a distinction were being made.

When the journalist, writing for popular consumption, writes “radioactive plutonium,” the expression may be construed as shorthand for “plutonium, which happens to be radioactive.” It is likewise with my other examples. Would the purist insist on the more wordy form in order to avoid using more words than necessary?

Journalists commit enough “real” pleonasms without our quibbling about technical pleonasms. Here are a few typical examples that we all see frequently:

The vehicle was traveling at a fast rate of speed. Speed is a rate, and “rate of speed” is redundant.

precipitate out. As distinguished from precipitating in? reinforced concrete internally buttressed with steel rods.

By definition, reinforced concrete is so buttressed.

a round-crowned derby hat.

the New Testament of the Christian Bible.

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

[In the Police Blotter reports in our local newspapers—those nasty little items that inform everyone in town about who got a parking ticket or went through a red light—there often appears the information that so-and-so was stopped for “speeding too fast for conditions,” another example of the same kind. In my opinion, a few extra words for the sake of clarity and style never did a writer (or a reader) any harm. Too often, phrases like “the United States' commitment to Israel” becomes “the United States commitment to Israel,” making an attributive noun out of what was formerly the normal (modifying) adjectival form of the noun—its possessive. This practice has led in the last few decades to a general shifting of nominal function, and today one sees nouns used constantly in attributive position. Nonetheless, I think it better style to write and say, “the commitment of the United States to Israel,” but that is a personal crotchet. On the other hand, elsewhere in this issue appears an article, “The Head of Coty’s Wife,” which deals with a slightly different aspect of the same sort of attributive laziness. One reflex of this practice can be seen in constructions that require a gerund in attributive position but end up with the participial form of the same word: “I am not confident of his doing the job” becomes “I am not confident of him doing the job.” The distinction between those two may be indiscernible to many, but not to me: the first is a reflection on the person’s ability; the second on the person himself, while he happens to be doing the job. Similarly, note the difference between “She doesn’t like my coming home late” and “She doesn’t like me coming home late.” The emphasis is entirely different, yet few people are capable of understanding the difference, and even fewer observe the need to make the distinction.

The last comments are not very much to the point of pleonasms, but they are related. Why is everyone in such a hurry? A more careful, deliberate adherence to a form of usage and syntax would reduce ambiguity, increase clarity, and result in both better information and better understanding.—Editor.]

EPISTOLA {Ed Haas}

“English as she is spoke,” by Michael Gorman [VII, 4], brought to my mind a printed souvenir I picked up at a hotel in Estepona, Spain, in 1974:

Thanks, you choiced our hotel to spend your holidays in it.

The direction and the staff are always at your disposition. In this hotel you will find a homely ambient, we hope you like it. To make our services more efficient, we ask you to write down on the back-side all kinds of avery or suggestions you would communicate us. Thank you.

[Ed Haas, Funk & Wagnalls]

EPISTOLA {Col. Robert Joseph Powers, USAF (ret.)}

I am mildly surprised that attitude adjustment hour struck you as a novel euphemism for ‘communal boozing’ [VII, 4], although I’ll admit that Winter Haven’s seven hours does set a record of sorts. To the best of my knowledge, this term surfaced in the military about fifteen years ago, during one of the service’s periodic attacks of image-conscious morality: booze became bad, officially, and the Happy Hour was to be downplayed. Some zealot interpreted this as prohibiting use of the more traditional name for after-hours lubrication. The troops, in their infinite wisdom, created Attitude Adjustment Hour as a subtle substitute. The same ineffable humor prevailed during the time when Robert McNamara was Secretary of Defense. That controversial gentleman promoted a controversial airplane, the swing-wing F-111. What else could we call it but the “Switchblade Edsel”?

[Col. Robert Joseph Powers, USAF (ret.), Shreveport, Louisiana]

Paring Pairs No. 6

The clues are given in items lettered (a-qq); the answers are given in the numbered items, which must be matched with each other to solve the clues. In some cases, a numbered word may be used more than once (and some clues require more than two answer items), but after all the matching have been completed, one numbered item will remain unmatched, and that is the correct answer. Our answer is the only correct one. The solution will be published in the next VERBATIM.

(a). Chastening influence.
(b). Disappointment.
(c). Coerce.
(e). Met pieman.
(f). Saint.
(g). Electronic layout.
(h). Where Trevi et al. might be kept.
(i). Source.
(j). Jazz tune.
(k). Pre-ballpoint essential.
(l). Eat.
(m). Row of trees.
(n). Carminate.
(o). CB interruption.
(p). 007’s optic.
(q). Infantile customers.
(r). Toxophilist.
(s). Meerschaum.
(t). Modern caravanserai.
(u). Turn of the century.
(v). Expert surfer.
(w). Tarkington creation.
(x). For writing swinish prose.
(y). Carroll’s elderly acrobat.
(z). End of the line.
(aa). Orange king.
(bb). Haute couture.
(cc). Crusader.
(dd). Eventide.
(ee). Stiff printing medium.
(ff). Hopalong Cassidy.
(gg). Makes for rough going.
(hh). Quality stationery.
(ii). New World propellant.
(jj). Professional journal.
(kk). Assault in the dark.
(ll). Jacket.
(mm). Use a watch.
(nn). Exupéry found it in Arras.
(oo). Self-contained airbreathing apparatus.
(pp). Celebrity.
(qq). Chronologer.

(1). Simon.
(2). Rode.
(3). Tiger.
(4). Brake.
(5). Bored.
(6). Pen.
(7). I.
(8). Simple.
(9). Rail.
(10). Bond’s.
(11). Rag.
(12). Trade.
(13). Breaker.
(14). Wiper.
(15). Tell.
(16). Wind.
(17). Pig.
(18). Liner.
(19). Father.
(20). Templar.
(21). Mow.
(22). Carriage.
(23). Paper.
(24). Bred.
(25). Fountain.
(26). Pipe.
(27). Hart.
(28). William.
(29). Rod.
(30). Head.
(31). Man.
(32). Bundling.
(33). Time.
(34). Night.

Winners will receive either a copy of the Collector’s Edition of Thomas Middleton’s Light Refractions (retail value, $30 or £15.00), a copy of English English, by Norman W. Schur (retail value, $24.95 or £12.50), three copies (one for you, two for gifts) of Wordsmanship, by Clauréne duGran (retail value, $29.85 or £14.85), twelve copies (one for you, eleven for gifts) of Definitive Quotations, by John Ferguson (retail value, $35.40 or £18.00), or a credit of $25.00 or £12.50 towards the purchase of any other title or titles offered in the VERBATIM Book Club Catalogue. Those living in the U.K., Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa should send their answers to VERBATIM, 2 Market Square, Aylesbury, Bucks, England. All others should send them, preferably on a postcard, to VERBATIM, Essex, CT 06426-0668, U.S.A.

Please indicate your choice of prize along with your answer to save everyone unnecessary correspondence.

To allow for the sloth of the various postal systems, and to make it fairer for those residing far from either office, we shall arrange to collect all correct answers for 21 days, starting with the day the first correct answer is received, and to draw one winner from each office.

Paring Pairs No. 5

Because of the quick succession of issues, we have some catching up to do in announcing the winners of Paring Pairs Nos. 3 and 4. The winner of No. 3 was, in North America, Doris Fields. The winner of No. 4 was Wayne Donaldson in North America; there was no winner in Europe. Winners of No. 5 were selected too late for inclusion in this issue.

(a). Buffalo dentists use this in flight of computer fancy. (40, 11) Byte Wing.
(b). Cockney slattern’s gone wiggy over salmon roe. (4, 28) Oar Locks.
(c). Repository of former glory. (29, 34) Has Bin.
(d). Boss Tweed couldn’t have been cleaner than this. (39, 10) Hound’s Tooth.
(e). Slothful, intoxicating Islamic spirit fizzes out. (45, 19) Slow Djinn.
(f). Seasonal release from prison. (48, 1) Spring Time.
(g). U.S.: trailer; Brit.: caravan. (2, 53) Moving House.
(h). Cares for cephalalgia. (25, 17) Head Nurse.
(i). Conventionalist from California in London. (24, 9) Berkeley Square.
(j). Stock of British sneakers is kept at sea level. (18, 27) Plimsoll Line.
(k). Polite, murderous conflict? (44, 3) Civil War.
(l). British B-girl? (38, 16) Tea Lady.
(m). Sweet monster at resort. (8, 43) Brighton Roc.
(n). Help yourself to 50 per cent of the total. (15, 33) Halve Sum.
(o). Mermaid’s home? (26, 23) Fingal’s Cave.
(p). Must have formal wedding—fruit and all! (22, 52) Cant Elope.
(q). Validity through haruspicy? (20, 51) Offal Truth.
(r). Madeline’s friend, now grown, is near Frankfurt/Main. (14, 47) Bad Homburg.
(s). Henry, Jane, and Peter owe us affectionate goodby. (49, 5) Fond Adieu.
(t). Pub sign of the hour. (37, 30) Time Gentlemen.
(u). He made it, but it sounds like a fraud. (42, 6) Fake It.
(v). Tiller sounds like this when boring. (7, 50) Hoe Hum.
(w). Part for Artur Rubinstein to eat? (12, 31) Piano Roll.
(x). Free use of spirit may cause wobbly walk. (46, 21) Foot Loose.
(y). Equipment for creating chaos at meals. (32, 35) Mess Kit.
(z). Increased price when you buy on time in England. (36, 41) Higher Purchase.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“BABE Treat wishes to announce the forthcoming marriage of her only daughter Patricia Elizabeth to William Andrew Bowman. The wedding to be consummated on October 9, 1981 at Salmon Arm, B.C….” [From a classified advertisement in The Weekender, September 25, 1981, page 13. Submitted by Lt. Col. N. Sadlier-Brown, Blind Bay, British Columbia. R.S.V.P.: Regrets only?]

Crossword Puzzle

Across

1. Almost flat-chested, they flaunt callipygian charms. (7)
5. Innocent movie fare. (7)
9. Cry when it’s quiet and nobody’s home. (b)
10. Monsters that jet or lay eggs. (9)
11. Crew for the Ship of Fools? (6)
12. One drink before the mixed congregation and that’s all! (8)
14. Quack’s sin of omission: his hangup is sheer bluff. (2,7)
16. In dire need, yet the girl splits. (5)
17. Deadly composition in A-flat. (5)
19. Hell is in poor taste. Let’s beat it! (9)
22. Our style of business life is one comic mess. (8)
23. Judge with no jury should consider fair sentences. (6)
26. Double ploy. (9)
27. I am without towering talent but at least true to type. (5)
28. Fashion’s pen sets the pattern for decency. (7)
29. Spacious look of all outdoors. (4, 3)

Down

1. He plays second for the one who got to first base. (4, 3)
2. Spaced-out drunk and coed took it on the lam…(7)
3. …well, it helps, you see, to stay loose. (5)
4. Language nobody ever heard. (4)
5. Privately, a supporter of Women’s Lib. (10)
6. Pleading poverty is not a good excuse. (4, 5)
7. Carrier of cash flow to the Middle East. (3, 4)
8. Japanese theater fashion belies lack of tone. (2, 5)
13. Coy MP, Rather bent. covers legal part in collusion. (10)
15. They would hold firm, along with old stocks and bonds. (9)
17. License paid for only in the breach. (7)
18. Pert duo did the show tour. (7)
20. It helps make the inaudible and invisible just the opposite. (7)
21. Indulgent one to cure sex kink. (7)
24. Go back in regret for being such a knave. (5)
25. Was Troy the beginner in that war? (4)

Crossword Puzzle Answers

Across

1. Aplomb (a plum);
4. Uppercut;
10. Obtuse angle;
11. Fox;
12. T-radi-TI-o-NS;
13. Yawn;
15. Opinion poll;
19. Godlessness;
22. Lark;
23. Parachuter;
26. dO A Foolish thing;
27. P-ersecu-T-i-O-n
28. Daydream;
29. Redeye.

Down

1. AD-option;
2. Lothario;
3. MIS-giving-S;
4. PAgan;
6. Ever (reve);
7. CA-fta-N;
8. Toxins (tocsins);
9. RATIONED (anagram TO A DINER);
14. Glass house;
16. Operated (anagram RED TAPE + O-round);
17. Best-ride;
18. ESTRANGE (anagram SERGEANT);
20. A-l-M-o-N-d;
21. DRaft-Y;
24. Aorta;
25. Spur.

Internet Archive copy of this issue