Zap the BEMs! Onward, Space Cadets!
-- The bumper sticker reads, “Beam me up, Scotty.
There is no intelligent life on this planet.”
-- Trying once more to attract the ear of Marvin the
daydreamer, his teacher says, “Earth to Marvin. Earth
to Marvin. Come in, please!”
-- After my infant son has done one of those cute
things that portend a definitely-not-ordinary childhood,
my mother-in-law asks, “What would Mr. [ sic ]
Spock say?” Without a beat missed, my wife, her sister,
and I--alleged adults all--reply, “Live long and prosper.”
If these vignettes strike sympathetic chords, then
science fiction's words, phrases, and lore have permeated
your thought and language.
This will not be a discussion of the science fiction
(SF) dialect, which is certainly a legitimate one, given
the millions of fans for whom blaster, phaser, warpdrive,
cyborg and the like are familiar terms. It will,
rather, treat those words and phrases, created in SF,
which are now in common non-SF use.
There has been no entirely satisactory definition
of science fiction: all proposals seem to exclude some
work which individual readers would include in the
genre. It has been suggested that SF include only those
stories which would be invalidated without their scientific
content; that fiction which concerns science,
scientists, and the impact of science on humans; that
which explores alternate existences (whether future,
extraterrestrial, or only in characters' minds) based on
facts and logical progression via scientific method. As
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote of
hard-core pornography, so do I of science fiction: “I
shall not attempt further to define the kind of material
...embraced within that short-hand description.
...But I know it when I see it.” The sources cited
here as SF have been classed as such by at least one
reputable critic.
One alternate existence, the ideal state, was considered
by the ancients (e.g., Plato's Republic and Aristophanes'
The Birds ). However, it is Sir Thomas More's
speculative work of political science and sociology-- Utopia
(from the Greek ou - `not' + topos -`place')--which
became, generically, the impossibly
perfect place. The looking-glass image of utopia--dystopia--has
provided more numerous additions
to the English lexicon. Aldous Huxley excerpted
words from Shakespeare's The Tempest (“How beauteous
mankind is! O brave new world,/ That has such
people in 't.”) for the ironic title of his dystopic novel.
The phrase brave new world is now synonymous with
a nightmarish, technically advanced society. George
This essay was selected as the First Prize winner
($1,000) in the Sixth VERBATIM Essay Competition.
Orwell constructed an alternative future in his vision
of the totalitarian state, Nineteen Eighty-Four . The
work has given English a small lode of unpleasantries:
the title itself connotes a society marked by government
terror and propaganda destroying the public's
consciousness of reality (the OED Supplement also accepts
1984 and 1984-ish as adjective forms); that government's
official language, Newspeak , now indicates
the propagandistic or ambiguous language of, among
others, politicians, bureaucrats, and broadcasters
(“revenue enhancement” for “tax increase,” etc.); the
twisting of minds to the capacity to accept the validity
of utterly contradictory opinions or beliefs, or double-think ;
the book's head of state, Big Brother , implies an
apparently benevolent, but really ruthless, omnipotent,
and omniscient state authority.
Taking an uncomfortably short speculative step
was Stanley Kubrick's 1963 film, “Dr. Strangelove, Or
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”
The title character of this dark comedy seriously considered
plans for and the “beneficial” results of nuclear
holocaust; such contemplation is strangelovian .
Robert A. Heinlein envisaged a more optimistic
future in his 1961 novel, Stranger in a Strange Land .
Its Martian-reared main character advocates advancing
the empathic capability of the human mind so
humans can grok `embrace others with profound, intuitive
understanding.' It is not clear why Heinlein chose
such an unpretty word for such a beautiful concept
(maybe it is euphonious to the Martian auditory apparatus);
it has, nevertheless, caught on.
Monsters have had starring roles in SF from its
early years. The archetypal uncontrollable creation-gone-amok
is Frankenstein's monster , commonly familiarized
to Frankenstein by the incognizant who
thus disserve Mary Shelley's Baron Frankenstein, the
monster's creator. The Baron may have been misguided,
but at least he was not so mad a scientist as to
experiment on himself. That lack of insight was shown
by Robert Louis Stevenson's good Dr. Jekyll ( The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , 1886), whose
impressive bodily transformations to his evil alter ego
made Jekyll-and-Hyde descriptive of persons who alternately
demonstrate good and evil behavior.
The recurrent motif of time travel came to the
fore in H.G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895), considered
by some the first work of true SF. The Wells prototype,
a controllable time-space traveler, is used allusively
by historians and forecasters (C. Day Lewis, in
“How Poetry Began” (1944), wrote “To find this out,
we'll have to jump into a Time Machine, put its gear
lever into reverse, and race backwards through many
thousands of years into prehistoric time.”). Einsteinian
relativity theory, with its absolute maximum speed
limit (the speed of light), might have put an end to
such speculation had it not also included the concept
of curvature of space. It was then but a small step to
the space warp, permitting faster-than-light (FTL to
SF pros) travel by straight-line shortcutting across the
curves of space. Except for its origin, in the British
Interplanetary Society Journal, space warp has been
restricted to fictional use. (After all, you can't have a
good intergalactic war when the next galaxy is, at the
speed of light, 2,200,000 years away.) Not so its cousin,
time warp (fathered by Walter M. Miller in 1954:
“They showed me a dozen pictures of moppets with
LTR-guns, moppets in time-warp suits, moppets wearing
Captain Chronos costumes....”); originally another
FTL, or time-travel device, it has entered standard
English, designating any sensation of time travel,
time discontinuity, or suspension of time's progress.
Time-travelers need not be scientists or super-heroes.
In the 1934 book Music Ho!, Constant Lambert noted
“The most successful time traveler of our days was
undoubtedly Serge Diaghileff.”
The catchwords of the classic science fiction era
were space and robot. Citations in the OED Supplement
for space technology terms yield a Who's Who of
SF: spacefaring (Poul Anderson, 1959); spacer `spaceman'
(C.M. Kornbluth and Isaac Asimov, both in
1958); spaceship (by John Jacob Astor, son of the fur
trader, 1894, C.S. Lewis in 1928, Arthur Clarke in
1951); space-flight (Arthur Clarke, 1949); space sickness
(Clarke, 1951). The moment of launch into space,
blast off, was created by Ray Bradbury (1951) in Silver
Locusts: “You could smell the hard, scorched smell
where the last rocket blasted off when it went back to
Earth.” Slang's space cadet `an eccentric, especially one
who is stuporous or out of touch with reality' evolved
from “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet,” a 1950 television
series depicting the adventures of a 24th-century cadet
in the Solar Guides, the interplanetary police force
keeping order in the Solar Alliance.
The properly dressed spaceman (Thrilling Wonder
Stories, 1942) must have a space suit (from the pulp
Science Wonder Stories, 1929) for his rendezvous with
the aliens, of whom many are BEMs (bug-eyed monsters)
or LGM (little green men). (Scientists currently
searching the radio frequency spectrum for signals indicative
of extraterrestrial intelligence refer to their
goal--positive intelligent signals--as LGM.) Alas,
such close encounters have not generally been friendly.
The battles between men and aliens have featured
manifold armament. Authors extrapolated from
Roentgen's 1895 discovery of x-rays and wrote of the
heat-ray (H. G. Wells in War of the Worlds, 1898), and
disintegrator rays (George Griffith's The Lord of Labour,
1911), not to mention ray-guns and blasters. The
weight of this fictional weaponry has popularized the
death ray from its pulp SF origins to serious contemporary
consideration as laser technology has advanced.
Weapons engineers have tried to euphemize and deromanticize
the terminology: death rays are called
“beam weaponry,” and the U.S. antimissile defense system
is SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative), despite the
public acceptance of the catchier Star Wars (from the
1977 SF film). We also should recognize SF as the
source of zap, which is used as noun, verb, and interjection
to indicate `sudden power' (n.), to `kill in a
burst' (v.), or the `sound effect for sudden destruction'
(int.). The OED Supp. traces the word from an
episode of the comic strip “Buck Rogers in the 25th
Century” written by Philip Francis Nowlan in
1929--“Ahead of me was one of those golden dragon
Mongols, with a deadly disintegrator ray...Br-r-rr-r-z-zzz-zap.”
--to its most notorious use (cited in American
Speech in 1962), “The jokester, pretending to be a
creature from outer space, pointed his cosmic ray gun
(finger) at his friend's genitals and exclaimed, `Zap!
You're sterile.' ”
The Czech playwright Karel Ĉapek was the creator
of robot a `machine which replaces a man' in
R.U.R. (for “Rossum's Universal Robots,” 1920); the
word is from the Czech robota `forced labor.' Though
Čapek conceived robots, it is Isaac Asimov who nurtured
them into fully developed SF characters. While
doing so, Asimov furnished English with robotic and
robotical, roboticist an `expert in their production and
operation,' robotics the `science of their design and
function,' and roboticized `rendered mechanical.' His
laws of robotics, which govern the relations of robots
with humans, were deemed by the OED Supp. editors
to be of such significance that they are cited in their
entirety.
As technology advances, life imitates art. Appropriate
words are adopted from fiction. Those remote
control arms with which laboratory personnel handle
toxic, radioactive, or infections substances are called
waldos (from Robert Heinlein's Waldo , 1942): the title
charcter, Waldo F. Jones, who has a crippling disease,
invents these devices to amplify the strength of his
wasted mucles. Not yet a reality, but often seriously
discussed, is terraforming `aitering an extracterrestrial
body to make it capable of supporting Earth's life
forms.' )The word and concept are Jack Williamson's,
from a 1942 story, “Seetee Ship.”) In less commom use,
but a wonderful word all the same , is corpsicle , Larry
Niven's term for a person frozen at death for future
reuscitation and repair (“The Defenseless Dead,”
1973). When we read of the ongoing search for grav-
ity-carrying subatomic particles-- gravitons --and
anti-gravitons, we should recall that Arthur Clarke
wrote of antigravity as a propulsive force in 1946
(Across the Sea of Stars”).
I could go on, but my ansible (FTL message receiver)
is displaying a rpiority-one hyperspace is urgently required
to mediate some tiff between local mutant
reptillians and the invading rebel positronic androids.
The matter transmitter has warmed up. My copilot
and astrogator have arrived. So long, Space Cadets!
We're off to save the Galaxy!
Allusions to “Star Trek” television series, books, and
movies.
“Earth to ...,”
Allusions to “Star Trek” television series, books, and
movies.
per Theodore Sturgeon.
per Isaac Asimov.
per Robert A. Heinlein.
“Serious crime down, but murders increase.” [From the
Rocky Mountain News , Denver, Colorado, . Submitted
by .]
“We consider pornography to be a public problem, and
we feel it is an issue that demands a second look.” [From a
speech by President Ronald Reagan on . Submitted
by .]
The Cryptic Toolbox
Seventy-five years ago, the daily New, York World
presented its readers with a new kind of puzzle
that consisted of a grid and a list of clues. The Word-Cross,
as it was called, started its existence as just
another little Sunday supplement feature, with no
pretensions to permanence. Yet it was to become the
progenitor of the now ubiquitous crossword puzzle.
The make-up of the grid has undergone various modifications
in the course of time but the rules of the game
have remained unchanged. As for the clues, they were
called “definitions,” and that indeed is what they
were.-- Or were they? On closer inspection, classic
clues appear to be divisible into three groups. First,
there are synonyms, like rooster for COCK. Admittedly,
there is no such thing as perfect synonymy, but the
meanings of many pairs of words are close enough for
this term to be used in the context of a pastime like
crosswords. Second, a clue may name a class of objects
which includes the answer, like bird for COCK. A more
specific class, e.g., male bird , makes solution easier,
whereas a more general class, e.g., animal , would
complicate the puzzler's task. The third group comprises
definitions proper. Such a clue for COCK might
read: adult male of the domestic fowl .
Crossword puzzles soon become very popular in
America, and perhaps even more so in Britain. But
someone must have felt that all this was too simple for
our overtrained brains. Straightforward definitions (of
all three varieties were gradually replaced by play on
words, ambiguous phrasings, jumble games, and other
verbal pranks. A clue for COCK might thus come to
read: number one in the pecking order dominates hens
and crows (a quizzical statement, unless the word
crows is read as a verb) or even: creature with a cow's
head and a bullock's rump found in a coop (first letter
of cow plus last three letters of bullock ).
The uninitiated may find these examples too bizarre
for words. Still, the idea has caught on so well
that most British newspapers now offer two crossword
puzzles each day. One is in the classic style, commonly
labeled “concise” or “quick.” The other is of the newer,
playful genre, often referred to as “cryptic”; but this
designation is by no means universal. (A well-known
American language journal prefers the term “Anglo-American.”)
In some countries, puzzles of this type are
called “cryptograms,” a name we shall use from here
on. This article is an attempt to catalogue the main
tools currently applied by cryptic puzzle-makers and
solvers.
A cryptogram clue can be a simple pun, like
A . A message that goes from pole to pole (8 letters) =
TELEGRAM
In most cases, however, it consists, as the previous
examples suggest, of two elements, each hinting at the
answer in its own way. This construction makes sense
since each hint by itself is generally so vague or open-ended
that it evokes more potential answers than a
puzzler's brain can handle. Two such hints, however,
have only a few possible answers in common, so that
the solver can concentrate on them and pick the most
probable one. This quest for the correct answer rests
on intricate mental processes which require no elaboration.
Our purpose here is rather to devise a classification
of the various types of clue elements (CEs) currently
in use.
Let us start with the three groups of clues encountered
in the classical crossword puzzle: synonyms,
superordinates, and definitions. Here are some examples
of their cryptic counterparts:
B . A writer or two (5) = TWAIN
The first CE ( A writer ) indicates a class to which
TWAIN belongs; the second ( two ) offers a synonym of
another possible meaning of the answer.
C . One who counts and recounts (6) = TELLER
The two CEs are telescoped. Each of them defines a
separate meaning of the answer.
These are really old-time clues in new apparel; once
wise to the system and having enough vocabulary entries
in one's head (or a thesaurus handy on the shelf),
it is not too difficult to decode them and arrive at the
answer. The going gets tougher, however, as the two
meanings of the answer move further apart:
D.
This landlord is quite a character (6) = LETTER
The mechanism is clear: landlord = LETTER, (`one
who lets'), and character = LETTER, but the two LETTERs
differ in both meaning and origin. (Note that
some double-dealing has also gone on with the word
character !) A third layer of camouflage is added in:
E.
Straight commotion (3) = ROW
The two ROWs differ in pronunciation as well as in
meaning and origin.
Just as disorienting are clues where the two meanings
of the answer belong to different word classes:
F.
A more successful gambler (6) = BETTER
To mystify solvers even more, puzzlers may use words
in an uncommon but perfectly legitimate sense, especially
by attributing to certain words ending in -er the
quality of agent noun. Bloomer (for `flower'), butter
(for `ram'), or even flower (for `river') are recurrent
examples, but solvers must always be on the alert for
new traps of this type:
G.
More than one anesthetic (6) = NUMBER
All of the above techniques rest, in one way or
another, on the meanings of words. They make up the
class of Semantic Clue Elements. Another class,
equally important in cryptoland, is that of Graphic
Clue Elements. Here, the object of play is the written
form of the answer, or, more precisely, the letters of
which that form consists. The best known member of
this class is undoubtedly the anagram:
H.
Victim of injustice could be grounded (8) =
UNDERDOG
The words could be which precede the anagram
grounded have a special function. They inform solvers
(if they get the message!) that an anagram is lurking
nearby. Indeed, convention requires that anagrams
(and all other Graphic CEs) be accompanied by such
flags. On the other hand, the cryptogram composer is
free to conceal these signals in all sorts of phrasal
hocus-pocus:
I.
Overturned vote overturns all votes (4) = VETO
Some other anagram flags are broken, strange, unorthodox,
maybe, kind of , and a source of . There are
dozens of them, and new ones are being concocted
every day.
Many anagrams spread over two or more words:
J.
Brave Tim changed quarterly (8) = VERBATIM
These are particularly tricky when short words, like
articles or pronouns, are involved:
K.
An event is organized for Italians (9) = VENETIANS
L.
You can't take it with you--neither can I, unfortunately
(11) = INHERITANCE
A subvariant of the anagram is the inversion:
M.
On reflection, the parts will hold together (5) =
STRAP
On reflection is a flag to indicate that parts is to be
read backwards. Other inversion flags are coming
back, returning , and going West . Purists admit these
only for answers that run horizontally in the grid. For
the “down” words, they prefer turning up, traveling
North , etc.
It is worth noting that the first element of clue M.
consists of the four words On reflection the parts . The
comma, correctly inserted between reflection and the ,
may mislead, but such punctuational conflicts are considered
perfectly legitimate, or even a piquant little
feature. We shall return to this point later.
Another type of Graphic CE is the acronym:
N.
The leaders of the unassuming Royal Knights Society
can be a source of delight (5) = TURKS
The leaders of is a flag intended to draw the solvers'
attention to the initial letters of the words following it,
where the answer lies for the taking. The most common
flag for acronyms is, as one would expect, initially .
The acronym does not stand by itself in the crypto
repertoire. In fact, it is the key member of a whole
family of Graphic CEs, all with their own specific
flags to indicate whether the answer is to be composed
from last letters, middle letters, or other word fragments.
An idea of the way they work has been given in
one of the introductory examples (the cow-bullock
creature).
A relatively new graphic technique is the sandwich.
The letters of the answer are left in their original order
but spread over two or more words:
O.
Lakeside city located inside the embankment or on
top of it (7) = TORONTO
or contained in a single word:
P.
A small capital in Czechoslovakia (4) = OSLO
Besides inside and in , common sandwich flags are part
of and some of .
As the above clues demonstrate, a Graphic CE should
be accompanied not only by a flag but also by a Semantic
CE. This conventional rule also holds for the
members of a third class, the Phonic Clue Elements.
These are based, just like the traditional pun, on
homophony:
Q.
Critique, one hears, of a theatrical entertainment
(5) = REVUE
Somewhat more involved is:
R.
It sounds in one sense (or in none) like simplicity
(9) = INNOCENCE
Phonic CEs are not very often used, probably because
all suitable flags ( I hear, it sounds, say , etc.) are so
obvious that they threaten to give the game away.
In the above tour d'horizon, not all aspects of clue
setting have passed in review. Nothing has been said
about the artful ways in which abbreviations, chemical
symbols, Arabic and Roman numerals, musical
notes, etc., may be used in clues. Hardly any attention
has been paid to one-element clues. (There are even
one-word clues, some of them particularly witty.) No
examples have been given of answers that consist of
more than one word. More important, no mention has
been made of the possibility of chopping the answer
into convenient pieces which are separately represented
in the clue by anagrams, synonyms, etc.
Just one real-life example:
S.
European city, home of the first person without
perverse words (9) = ?
Solution:
words = terms (synonym)
perverse = flag for anagram
anagram of `terms' = MSTER
the first person = ADAM
without = outside (!)
ADAM outside MSTER = AMSTERDAM
Clue syntax deserves a more thorough examination
than space permits; but perhaps it would be best to
comment on some aspects of the ethics of compiling
clues.
The first commandment in the puzzlers' bible
reads: Thou shalt not waste words. A well-constructed
clue comprises only words necessary for conveying, in a
deceptive way, the information solvers require to find
the answer. Adding fillers to distract them is considered
unfair. As for the answer, it is better to avoid very
learned or rare words unknown to all but a few lexicographers.
The idea is to test the solvers' skill in deciphering
clues rather than their familiarity with the
recondite recesses of the lexicon. (This being said, one
British publication does offer a special obscure-words
puzzle, probably for the benefit of glossarial masochists.
Little wonder it appears under the name of
Mephisto.)
On the other hand, it is admissible, as we have
already seen, to throw solvers off the scent with an
occasional comma in the “wrong” place. The same
holds for other dividers, such as colons, dashes, hyphens,
and blanks. Likewise, a bit of juggling with
apostrophes, quotation marks, and capitals is permitted,
always on the understanding that no punctuation
or spelling rules are infringed. And it goes without
saying that clue texts may be arranged in such a way
that, at first sight, certain words appear to belong to a
different inflectional form or word class than is actually
the case when the clue is unlocked. In fact, this is
an essential part of the fun. This feature has already
been demonstrated in the very first example (the cock
that crows) and also in clue F. Clue J offers two further
instances: at first reading, changed is suggestive of being
a past tense but after analysis it is identified as a
past participle (serving as an anagram flag); likewise,
quarterly shifts from adverb to noun.
Let us end with a specimen in which several of the
above techniques are represented:
T.
Part of his imprint appears in absurd Anglo-Saxon
rules, word for word (6) = ?
Solution: Replace in the second element (rules word
for word) the last three words by their synonym
“verbatim.” Well, who rules VERBATIM?
His name (= part of his imprint) appears
in absurd Anglo-Saxon.
“Mereu stayed with 50 of Angius' 400 sheep, dressed in
dirty and ragged canvas clothing and shoes with holes.” [The
Des Moines Sunday Register , . Submitted
by .]
“Robert Dole is way ahead, followed closely by his wife,
Elizabeth Dole.” [Heard on WEEI-AM, Boston, Massachusetts,
on . Submitted by .]
“Visitor, Joe Smith, Jr., age 17, fell in front of the hospital.
He was treated in E.R. and released. Mr. Joe Smith, Sr.,
was notified who is a patient in room 622A due to his son's
age.” [A security guard's accident report. Submitted by
.]
Money of the Realm
One of the privileges of national sovereignty is the
right to name your country's money, or to rename
it when the old name has acquired unpleasant
associations. The tourist struggling at each border
crossing with exchanging one country's money for that
of another and trying to fix values may not have the
time then to wonder why a country's money is called
what it is. [Because so many languages are involved,
the names that follow are as used in English language
publications of the International Monetary Fund.]
Money originated in the form of coins. For many
countries the current names of what is now mostly
paper money are based on characteristics of the old
coins or refer to the fact that the weight of a silver or
gold coin was often an indication of its value. The
pound sterling (the money of the United Kingdom),
for example, apparently derived from a pound weight
of silver pennies of the Norman period which had a
star on them (Old English: steorling `coin with a star').
The concept continues through the Spanish word for
`weight': peso (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican
Republic, Mexico, Philippines, Uruguay); its
diminutive: peseta (Spain), and the same word in Portuguese:
peso (Guinea-Bissau).
The association of money names with other
weights is common: ouguiya (Mauritania) means
`ounce.' Kyat (Burma) is the name for a measure of
16.33 grams. Baht (Thailand) is a weight of 15 grams.
Drachma (Greece), which literally means a `handful,'
is a weight of 3.2 grams. Dirham (Morocco, United
Arab Emirates) derives from drachma .
As in the United Kingdom, the currency names of
other economically powerful countries have long historical
roots. Franc (France) goes back to a 14th-century
coin inscribed “Francorum rex,” `King of the
Franks.' Dollar (United States and some other countries)
derives from the German Thaler , a coin of the
16th century which was minted in silver from a mine in
Joachimsthal. The word dollar was used in 17th-century
England to refer to the thaler and became the
official name of the United States monetary unit by an
Act of the Continental Congress, on July 6, 1785.
Denarius , a coin of ancient Rome, evolved into
dinar , the name used by many countries of the eastern
Mediterrean which were once part of, or near, the
ancient Roman Empire (Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan,
Kuwait, Libya, People's Democratic Republic of
Yemen, Tunisia, Yugoslavia). Denarius was the source
of the abbreviation d for the former English penny.
Shilling , another coin in the predecimal pound sterling
may take its name from the Roman coin, solidus ,
worth about 25 denarii. It is the money name in
Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, and, spelt Schilling ,
in Austria. Metical (Mozambique) was a former
Arab unit of currency. Dobra (São Tomé and Prín-
cipe), meaning `double,' is the name of a former Portuguese
gold coin. Pataca (Macau) stems from a 17th-century
Spanish and Portuguese coin, the patacoon.
Kina (Papua New Guinea) originated from shell
money used for centuries by people along their coast;
the cedi of Ghana means `small shell' after the former
use of the cowrie shell for money. The complete panel
of cloth formerly used for money is the meaning behind
dalasi (The Gambia).
Mark was a common term used throughout Europe
for a weight of silver or gold, usually about eight
ounces. The name was adopted by Germany in 1875
for a coin to replace the thaler. The Germans retained
the name even when its monetary value sank so low
that currency reform was necessary. It was the reichsmark
that suffered through the hyperinflation of
1922-23 when the cost of mailing a letter went from
one reichsmark to 40 billion in 17 months. The rentenmark ,
secured by the industrial and agricultural
resources of the country, was introduced in limited
amounts to stabilize the currency. (This was the creation
of the German financier and Central Banker,
Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht.) The name continues
in Deutsche mark (West Germany) and mark (East
Germany). When Brazil reformed its economy several
years ago, the former name of its currency was
changed from cruzeiro to cruzado , the meaning `little
cross' to `crusade' being of less importance than the
similarity of the names in Portuguese.
The names of some kinds of money are associated
with the metal originally used or some related feature.
`Gold' is the meaning of guilder (Netherlands) and
ztoty (Poland). The Sanskrit for `wrought silver' is the
basis for rupee (India, Pakistan, Seychelles, Sri
Lanka), rupiah (Indonesia), and rufiyaa (Maldives).
Birr (Ethiopia) means `silver' and was the name used
beginning in the 18th century to designate the Maria
Theresa thaler, an Austrian coin which circulated in
countries around the Red Sea. Ringgit (Malaysia)
means `serrated, milled,' a characteristic of the edging
on coins. Kip (Laos) means `ingot.' Ruble (Russia),
which literally means `stump,' might have denoted a
piece cut from a silver bar.
Some countries name their currency to honor people
famous in their history: bolivar (Venezuela) for the
liberator of South America, Simón Bolívar; sucre
(Ecuador) for Antonio José de Sucre, chief lieutenant
of Bolívar and liberator of what is now Ecuador at the
battle of Pichincha in 1822 near Quito; colón (Costa
Rica, El Salvador) for Christopher Columbus; balboa
(Panama) for Vasco Núñez de Balboa, discoverer of the
Pacific Ocean; lempira (Honduras) for the 16th-century
Indian chief who is a national symbol of liberty
and valor for resisting the Spanish advance; and córdoba
(Nicaragua) for Francisco Hernández de Cór
doba, first acting governor. Both Balboa and Córdoba
were deputies of the Spanish governor in Panama, Pedro
Arias Da\?\ila, who subsequently executed them.
The regional characteristic of using the same idea
as a basis for selecting a currency name is apparent
from these South and Central American neighboring
countries.
It is true also in Scandinavia where the money
name is crown: krona (Sweden, Iceland), krone (Norway,
Denmark). The only non-Scandinavian “crown”
is koruna (Czechoslovakia). Regional patterns emerge
elsewhere: in northern Asia the money names mean
`round, circular': yen (Japan), won (Korea), tugrik
(Mongolia), and yuan (People's Republic of China). In
the last, the currency name is actually renminbi , `people's
money,' with the unit of account being the yuan .
The meaning `royal' appears as riyal (Saudi Arabia,
Qatar), rial (Iran, Oman, Yemen Arab Republic), and
further south as lilangeni (Swaziland).
History and myth provide another source for
names. Shekel (Israel) was a Babylonian weight which
became the coin of the Hebrews. [Exodus 30:13 “This
they shall give...half a shekel after the shekel of the
sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs) and half shekel
shall be the offering of the Lord.”] Taka (Bangladesh),
literally `money,' derives from tonka of the old Persian
language which was the money of the 16th-century
Mughal empire in circulation in what was then Bengal.
Inti (Peru) was the sun god in the ancient Peruvian
religion; Peru's previous money was sol , Spanish for
`sun.' Rand (South Africa) is the now common name
for the witwatersrand , the site of the great gold fields
found in the late 19th century and the original source
of its wealth.
For most countries the easiest source of a name for
their money has been to take that of another country,
either because of proximity and association with a
strong economic country or because of a former colonial
relationship. Thus, Belgium, Switzerland, and
Luxembourg use franc ; Canada and The Bahamas
choose dollar .
The name dollar is used by sixteen more countries:
Australia, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Brunei, Fiji,
Guyana, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Liberia, New Zealand,
Singapore, Solomon Islands, Taiwan, Trinidad and
Tobago, and Zimbabwe. As the East Caribbean dollar ,
it is used by several small countries who do not have
their own money: Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St.
Christopher and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent.
The name pound is used by Cyprus, Egypt, Ireland
(as punt ), Lebanon, Sudan, and Syria. Lira (Italy,
Malta, Turkey) is a contracted form of the Latin
word for `pound' libra. Mark traveled as markka to
Finland.
The names franc and guilder spread only to their
former colonial areas. The franc appears in Burundi,
Comoros, Djibouti, French Guiana, Guinea, Malagasy,
Rwanda, and as a common currency of the CFA
(Communauté Francaise Africaine), comprising Benin,
Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Central African
Republic, Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon,
Mali, Niger, People's Republic of the Congo, Senegal,
and Togo. Guilder is used in Netherlands Antilles and
Suriname.
Money has also derived its names from things or
animals. Lev (Bulgaria) and leu (Romania) mean
`lion.' Escudo (Portugal, Cape Verde) means `shield.'
Quetzal (Guatemala) is the national bird and guarani
(Paraguay) the name of an Indian tribe. Forint (Hungary)
means `flower,' pula (Botswana) `rain,' austral
(Argentina) `southern,' and kwanza (Angola) `first.'
Kwacha (Malawi, Zambia) means `dawn' in reference
to the “dawn of freedom.” Tala (Western Samoa) is
derived from dollar , while pa'anga was selected by
Tonga. As reported in The N.Y. Times , “Tonga has
decided against calling its new decimal currency unit
the dollar because the native word tola also means a
`pig's snout,' the `soft end of a coconut,' or, in vulgar
language, a `mouth.' The new unit...has only two
alternative meanings--a `coin-shaped seed' and, not
surprisingly, `money.' ”
When no other source seems suitable, nations
name their money after the country. Naira (Nigeria) is
derived from the country's name as is probably Vatu
(Vanuatu). More direct is afghani (Afghanistan), leone
(Sierra Leone), and the ultimate in directness, zaire
(Zaire).
English Is A Crazy Language
English is the most widely spoken language in the
history of our planet. English has acquired the
largest vocabulary and inspired one of the noblest bodies
of literature in the annals of the human race.
Nonetheless, English is a crazy language. In the
crazy English language, the blackbird hen is brown,
blackboards can be blue or green, and blackberries are
green and red before they are ripe. To add to this
insanity, there is no butter in buttermilk , no egg in
eggplant , neither worms nor wood in wormwood , and
no ham in a hamburger . (In fact, if somebody invented
a sandwich consisting of a ham patty in a bun, we
would have a hard time finding a name for it.) And we
discover more culinary madness in the revelations that
English muffins weren't invented in England, French
fries in France, or Danish pastries in Denmark. In this
weird English language, greyhounds aren't always
grey (or gray), a ladybug is a beetle, guinea pigs are
neither pigs nor from Guinea, and a titmouse is neither
mammal nor mammaried.
Language is like the air we breathe. It is invisible,
inescapable, and indispensable; yet we take it for
granted. But when we take time to explore the vagaries
of English, we find that hot dogs can be cold, darkrooms
can be lit, nightmares can take place in broad
daylight, midwives can be men, hours--especially
happy hours and rush hours--can last longer than
sixty minutes, ice cubes can be noncubic, tablecloths
can be made of paper, silverware can be made of
plastic, most telephones are dialed by being punched
(or pushed?), and most bathrooms don't have any
baths. In fact, a dog can go to the bathroom under a
tree--no bath, no room--it is still “going to the bathroom.”
Why is it that a woman can man a station, but a
man cannot “woman” one, that a man can father a
movement, but a woman cannot “mother” one, and
that a king rules a kingdom , but a queen does not rule
a “queendom”? A writer is someone who writes, and a
stinger is something that stings. But fingers do not
“fing,” grocers “groce,” hammers “ham,” or humdingers
“humding.” If the plural of mouse is mice , why
don't we live in “hice”? One tooth , two teeth ; so why
not one booth , two “beeth”? One index , two indices --one
Kleenex , two “Kleenices”? If someone rang a
bell , why don't we say that she also “flang” a ball? If
she wrote a letter, perhaps she also “bote” her tongue.
If the teacher taught , why isn't it also true that the
preacher “praught”? If she conceives a conception and
receives at a reception , why didn't she grieve a “greption”
and believe a “beleption”?
If a horsehair mat is made from the hair of horses
and a camel's hair brush from the hair of camels, from
what is a mohair coat made? If a vegetarian eats vegetables,
what does a humanitarian eat? If pro and con
are opposites, is congress the opposite of progress ?
In this confusing language of ours noisome doesn't
mean `noisy,' meretricious is anything but meritorious,
penultimate is less ultimate than ultimate , but invaluable
is more valuable than valuable .
No wonder that we English speakers are constantly
standing meaning on its head. We delete negatives
and say, I could care less , when we really mean, `I
couldn't care less,' and we add gratuitous negatives
and say, I miss not seeing her , when we really mean, `I
miss seeing her.' Any book that keeps us literallly glued
to our seat actually keeps us figuratively glued to our
seat, a near miss (which is a`collision') is a `near hit,'
something that falls between the cracks would in reality
land on the planks or the concrete, a big traffic
bottleneck is a `small bottleneck,' and a hot cup of
coffee is really a `cup of hot coffee.' We get up in the
morning and put on our shoes and socks and then go
back and forth . No, we put on our socks and shoes and
then go forth and back .
Because English speakers seem to have our heads
screwed on backwards, they constantly misperceive
their bodies. They fall head over heels in love when we
really mean heels over head in love. If they are disappointed
or afraid, they try to keep a stiff upper lip
when it is the lower lip they are trying to control. They
complain that things are being done behind their
backs , but nothing can be done “in front of their
backs.” And they try to avoid doing things ass back-wards
when `ass backwards' is the only way that anyone
can do anything.
Sometimes you have to believe that all English
speakers should be committed to an asylum. In what
other language do people drive in a parkway and park
in a driveway ? In what other language can the
weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell the
next? In what other language can quite a lot and quite
few mean the same thing, as well as loosen and unloosen,
ravel and unravel, passive and impassive,
flammable and inflammable, shameful and shameless
(behavior) and What won't he do next ? and What will
he do next ? In what other language are overlook and
oversee opposites but a slim chance and a fat chance
the same? Why is it easier to assent than to dissent but
harder to ascend than to descend ? Is it really true that
if you decide to be `bad forever,' you have chosen to be
bad for good , and if you are wearing only your right
shoe, your right one is left. Right?
When the sun or moon or stars are out they are
visible, but when the lights are out , they are invisible.
A piece of cloth that wear may be the same as a piece
of cloth that won't wear . Trimming a tree may involve
cutting it away or, especially around Christmas, adding
to it . When we wind up a watch, we `start' it, but
when I wind up this disquisition, I shall `end' it.
Does it not seem just a little bizarre that we can
make amends but never just one “amend”; that no
matter how carefully we comb through history, we can
never discover just one “annal”; that, sifting through
the wreckage of a disaster, we can never find just one
“smithereen”; and that we never contract a single
“heebie-jeebie”? Which reminds me to ask a burning
linguistic question. If you have a bunch of odds and
ends and you get rid of or sell off all but one of them,
what is left?
What do you make of the fact that we can talk only
about the nonexistence, never the existence, of certain
items and concepts? Have you ever run into someone
who was “combobulated,” “chalant,” “sheveled,” “gruntled,”
or “gainly”? We all know people who are no
spring chickens , but where, pray tell, are the people
who are “spring chickens”? Have you ever met someone
who was “great shakes,” who could “cut the mustard”
and “do squat,” who “was your cup of tea,” and whom
you “would touch with a ten-foot pole”? Do you know
anyone who is a “slouch” or “would hurt a fly”?
If the truth be told, all languages are a little
crazy. As Walt Whitman might proclaim, they contradict
themselves. That is because language is invented,
not discovered, and, as such, language reflects the creativity
and fearful asymmetry of the human mind. In
his essay “The Awful German Language,” Mark Twain
spoofs the confusion engendered by German gender by
translating from a conversation in a German Sunday
school book:
GRETCHEN: Wilhelm, where is the turnip?
WILHELM: She has gone to the kitchen.
GRETCHEN: Where is the accomplished and beautiful
English maiden?
WILHELM: It has gone to the opera. Twain continues:
“a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are
neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female--tomcats
included.”
Still, you have to wonder about the crazy English
language, in which your house can burn up and burn
down at the same time, in which you fill in a form by
filling out a form, in which you add up a column of
figures by adding them down , in which your alarm
clock goes off by going on , and in which you first chop
down a tree--and then chop up a tree.
Foreign Correspondents
It all began with Lenin. The Russian Revolution,
the Soviet Union, and journalistic expertise devoted
to these supremely important phenomena of the
twentieth century began with Vladimir Ilich Lenin.
But as far as American journalism is concerned, that
pronouncement is not quite correct, because more often
than not American journalists began and for an
embarrassingly long time continued not with Vladimir
or Ilich (as the founding Bolshevik is sometime affectionately
called, peasant-fashion by his patronymic)
but with Nikolai Lenin. The error flawed the record
beyond newspaper reporting. For example, The Columbia
Encyclopedia , in an edition last copyrighted in
1940, has an appropriately long entry for “the founder
of the USSR” under Lenin, Nikolai . How this mistake
came about in the first place no one is certain. Lenin
did use the pseudonym N. Lenin , among scores of
others, and maybe a self-styled authority assumed that
the N . stood for Nikolai , a name that may have been
suggested by that of the Russian emperor. In European
continental usage the letter N , corresponding to X in
the English-speaking world, is sometimes used for a
name an author does not wish to reveal. At any rate,
the mistake, trivial in itself, tended to discredit a good
deal of American reporting about the Soviet Union
among people who knew better. After all, if the bourgeois
press could not get even Lenin's name right, how
reliable was it about anything else in the USSR?
Decades later the leadership of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union was assumed by Nikita
Sergeevich Khrushchev. By then Kremlinology had
matured and the American press had all of Khrushchev's
names right, though there were several ways to
transliterate and pronounce them in English. To the
horror of some Western readers, however, he was at
least once quoted out of context as having threatened
to “bury” America. And he did say that. But the Russian
verb he used in a sentence that was more a bellicose
boast than a threat was pokhoronit', which means
`bury,' all right, but in the sense of the verb in “we
burried Grandma last week.” When Nikita Sergeevich
bragged that the USSR would bury the USA, he meant
that technologically and economically the Soviets
would leave us in the dust, would be around for our
funeral, not that they would put us six feet under.
If our press would attain true excellence in selecting
English expressions to correspond to Russian originals,
it should exercise more care about designating
the Soviet Union as “Russia” and Soviets as “Russians.”
Russia, now the RSFSR (for Russian Soviet Federated
Socialist Republic) is only one of several Soviet republics,
which are more like states of the United States
than what we generally mean by “republic,” and Russians
(sometimes redundantly called “ethnic Russians”)
make up only about half of the population of the
USSR. So referring to the USSR as “Russia” is a mistake
on the order of calling the United Kingdom or
Great Britain “England.” However, the boundaries of
the tsar's empire, for centuries known as “Russia,” were
approximately the same as those of the Soviet Union; it
was occasionally known as “the Russias,” as in the formula
“Tsar of all the Russias”; thus, this particular
confusion comes naturally. Gorbachev himself is said
to have had to apologize while making a speech in the
Ukraine when he referred to the Ukraine as “Russian.”
This faux pas might be likened to the Queen of England's
saying in an address before Welsh miners, “As we
here in England well know ...”
The problem of drawing a distinction between
Russians and citizens of the USSR has been solved by
borrowing the word Soviet into English as an adjective
or a noun meaning a person and not an institution,
except rarely as in the designation Supreme Soviet . In
Russian Sovét means basically `counsel' and `council'
and by extension `assembly'. It never means a `citizen of
the USSR' or any other kind of person in Russian,
though its adjectival derivative sovetskii can be used
substantively alone or followed by chelovek `person,' to
mean a `Soviet person.' So the English word Soviet
corresponds to both the Russian noun sovét or much
more often to the Russian adjective sovetskii in their
many inflected forms.
Currently two Russian words are challenging
correspondents, among others, to find English
equivalents: perestroika and glasnost '. The first of
these Gorbachevian buzzwords can be handily calqued
into English as `restructuring.' Glasnost ', though, is
more difficult. As a calque it would come into English
as vocalness , which is no word. It is not a new word in
Russian. The 1935 edition of the four-volume Tolkovyi
Slovar' Russkogo Yazyka (`Explanatory Dictionary of
the Russian Language') defines glasnost' as: “Accessibility
to public discussion and evaluation; publicity.” I
can think of no single English word that quite corresponds
to this definition. Publicity perhaps comes closest.
But since both perestroika and glasnost' from our
point of view do not mean `restructuring' and `publicity'
generally, as the English words do to us, but rather
refer to reforms specifically initiated by Gorbachev,
the Russian words, particularly glasnost', are usually
borrowed into English unaltered (except in pronunciation).
There are, of course, precedents for this sort of
intact borrowing: pogrom, ukase, intelligentsia , and
muzhik for example. And in the same way Russian
speakers have helped themselves to our sex, jazz,
lynch , and business .
Apropos of Gorbachev--and Khrushchev too for
that matter--those es in their names pose a problem of
phonetic correspondence. Though usually written in
Russian like any other e , just as in English, they are
pronounced like os . Sometimes in textbooks for children
and beginners such es are marked in Russian with
two dots over them; they are sometimes transliterated
into English as os , so that occasionally you will see the
spelling Gorbachov , which in my opinion is preferable.
Then another variant in transliteration is
-ov/-off, -ev/-eff . The name ending in double f for
what in Russian is invariably v is seldom seen nowadays;
but a few decades ago or in documents or books
written then you might have seen the two Soviet leaders'
names transliterated Gorbacheff or Gorbachoff
Lite/Light
For approximately a thousand years, the word
light has been used to describe beer and wine
containing less alcohol than regular beer and wine:
c 1000 Ags. Voc. in Wr.- Willcker 282/6
Melle dulci, leoht beor. (Oxford English
Dictionary)
c 1000 Sax. Leechd. III. 122 Drince leoht wyn.
(OED)
Currently, however, many a denizen of the United
States regards light (also spelled lite ) as a label that
indicates that a beer is lower in calories than its nonlight
counterparts.
and Khrushcheff or Khrushchoff . I have seen both the
-ov and - off transliterations on the same page of a
book. The reason for this variation is that when the
Cyrillic letter that represents our English v -sound is
final in a word, as in the nominative case for
Gorbachev , it is unvoiced and sounds like f (or ff for
good measure); when an inflectional ending is added,
as in Gorbacheva (the genitive case), that same letter
is voiced, like v .
Such variations in transliteration are practically
endless, and hardly any variation can be called an
error, though consistency is obviously desirable. The
most troublesome inconsistencies in transliteration
seem to be owing either to the human tendency to
conceal doubt behind abundance or to multiple naturalizations
as the name migrates across Europe. For
instance, in English the name of the Russian composer
is usually spelled Tchaikovsky and sometimes as
Tschaikovsky or Tschaikowsky where three or four
English letters are used to represent a sound represented
by a single Russian letter and more normally by
only two in English, ch . The name Chaliapin was first
transliterated into a French spelling Chaliapine ; later,
when most of the family moved to the United States,
the e was dropped to Anglicize the spelling. This was a
confusing half measure, however; the initial ch remained
as in the French spelling, representing a Russian
letter borrowed from the Hebrew alphabet for the
sound represented in English by sh . As a result, many
Americans innocently mispronounce the name of the
great operatic bass and his descendants. A certain Tennessean,
who became a good friend of Boris Chaliapin,
the Time cover artist, got off on the wrong foot
when he heard the artist's name as Charley Apin .
Since Boris was too polite to correct the Tennessean,
and others who knew better found the mistake too
amusing to rectify, that one American friend called
Boris good ol' Charley Apin as long as the friend lived.
The roots of the `reduced calorie' meaning of
lite/light go back to 1967. In that year Meister Brau
Inc. of Chicago initially marketed Meister Brau Lite, a
reduced-calorie beer. Women were targeted as the primary
consumers; but the beer, which was promoted as
a diet drink, was not very successful. In 1972, Phillip
Morris, Inc.'s Miller Brewing Co. acquired the Lite
beer label in a buyout of Meister Brau Inc. Miller Lite
was introduced to test markets in 1973; and the first
Lite commercial, which featured Super Bowl hero
Matt Snell, aired in July of that year. The tenth Lite
commercial, which featured linebacker Dick Butkus,
was shot in May 1975 just as Miller Lite was going
national.
Miller Lite commercials were designed to convince
young males that it is all right to drink light beer.
Consequently, these commercials, which, according to
Video Storyboard Tests Inc., are among the most popular
ever to be shown on television, have featured former
athletes (e.g., Bubba Smith, Bob Uecker, and Rosie
Grier) and celebrities (e.g., author Mickey Spillane,
drummer Buddy Rich, and comedian Rodney Dangerfield).
The original theme of these commercials was:
“Everything you always wanted in a light--and less.”
During the early years that Miller was convincing
the public that tough guys do drink light beer, other
breweries remained skeptical. Because they thought
light beer had a wimpy image, they stayed out of the
light beer market for a while. When other breweries
finally did enter the market, most of them used the
spelling l-i-g-h-t: Bud Light, Coors Light, Michelob
Light, Natural Light, Old Milwaukee Light, Stroh
Light . The reason for this was simple enough: Miller
Brewing Co. owned the trademark Lite , which it had
purchased from Meister Brau Inc. in 1972. However,
brewer Paul Kalmanovitz, owner of Falstaff Brewing
Co. of Omaha and General Brewing Co. of Vancouver,
Washington, challenged Miller's exclusive right to
Lite . In July 1982, a U.S. District Court jury in San
Francisco ruled that Lite was just an alternate spelling
of Light . As a result of this decision, Lite may now be
used on the label of any beer to indicate that it is a
reduced-calorie beer.
According to The Wall Street Journal (April 20,
1988) light beers represent approximately 22 percent of
the $13 billion beer market. The popularity of reduced-calorie
beers has resulted in the inclusion of the following
definition of lite/light in The Random House Dictionary
of the English Language, Second Unabridged
Edition : “13. (of alcoholic beverages)... (esp. of beer
and wine) having fewer calories and usually a lower
alcohol content than the standard product.”
Not all light beers are created equal, however.
Some have fewer calories than others: Michelob Light,
134 calories per 12-ounce serving; Stroh Light, 115;
Budweiser Light, 108; Miller Lite, 96; Pabst Extra
Light, 70; and Pearl Lite, 68. As we can see, Michelob
Light has almost twice as many calories as Pearl Lite.
In fact, Michelob Light has one calorie more (i.e.,
134) than Heidelberg regular beer (133 calories).
Since 1978, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms has been involved in rule-making regarding
the use of lite/light as a label for alcoholic beverages.
Jim Ficaretta of the BATF has stated that, according
to the current ruling, if lite/light in the sense `reduced
calorie' is applied to a malt beverage, the label on that
product must contain a statement of average analysis
with regard to calories, carbohydrates, fat and protein.
If lite/light simply describes a characteristic of
the beer (e.g., taste, body, color), no such statement is
required. The last word on this matter has not been
written, however. A decade after it first became involved
in the lite/light issue, the BATF , with several
proposals on hand, is still working on rule-making
with regard to the use of lite/light as a label for malt
beverages, wines, and spirits.
The barons of beerdom are not the only merchants
to have produced reduced-calorie ingestibles. A
plethora of reduced-calorie foods are also available for
the weight-conscious among us. Where food products
are concerned, however, no one has ever held the exclusive
right to lite . Therefore, both lite and light have
been freely used in the names of products: e.g., Prince
Light Spaghetti, Aunt Jemima Lite Syrup, Thank You
Light Pie Filling, Whitman's Lite Chocolates, Wonder
Light Buns , and even Alpo Lite Dog Food . Such products
often have one third fewer calories than their nonlight
counterparts, although that proportion might
vary.
Health-conscious Americans are concerned not
only with calories. They also want less caffeine in their
coffee, less salt in their pickles, less sodium in their
salt, no sugar added to their canned fruits, and less tar
in their cigarettes. Consequently, those merchants who
pander to and even help create our wants and needs
have provided us with, to name but a few, the following
lite/light products: Manor House Lite Coffee with
one third less caffeine than regular coffee; Piper's
Farms Lite Kosher Dills with 50 percent less salt than
Piper's Farm regular dill pickles; Morton Lite Salt with
half the sodium of regular table salt; Libby's Lite
Pears, Peaches, Mixed Fruits , and Fruit Cocktail , all
of which have no sugar added; Pall Mall Light 100's
with one third less tar than “the leading filter king-sized
cigarette.”
Gregory Weismantel, president of Manor House
Foods, has stated: “ Lite is perceived by consumers as a
name of a product that has less of a negative ingredient”
( Chicago Tribune , November 4, 1981). His statement
foreshadowed a new definition of lite/light that
six years later appeared in Random House II : “12. low
in any substance, as sugar, starch, or tars, that is considered
harmful or undesirable: light cigarettes .”
Lite/Light , when applied to a food, may refer to
the product's taste, color, or texture rather than to the
number of calories or the amount of fat, salt, sugar, or
cholesterol it contains. For example, in 1982, Frito-Lay
introduced Light Corn Chips , which were thinner
and crispier than Frito-Lay's regular corn chips but
which had just as much salt and a few more calories
than the regular product. In order to avoid confusion,
Frito-Lay subsequently changed the name to Crisp 'N
Thin Corn Chips . Not all manufacturers of food products
are as concerned about customer confusion, however.
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) has observed: “[Food
companies] strain the limits of the English language
and our patience by overusing words such as...
light . The more we distort the language, the less the
consumer can understand the product” ( Chicago SunTimes ,
October 19, 1986).
In an effort to shed some light on the use of
lite/light , Rep. Cooper introduced in February 1986 a
bill that would have limited the use of lite/light to
products that have one third fewer calories, one half
less fat, or three fourths less sodium than regular (i.e.,
nonlight) products. This bill was lost in the legislative
shuffle, however, and, as of this writing (October 25,
1988), has yet to be passed in spite of having been
reintroduced in 1987 and 1988. The bill, which, in its
current form, would require a product labeled
lite/light to have one third fewer calories, one third less
fat, or one third less sodium than regular, nonlight
products, will have to be introduced once again in
1989. Perhaps the fourth time will be a charm.
Potables, comestibles, and smokables are not the
only products to bear the lite/light designation. In
1982, Hallmark introduced a series of greeting cards
that contained puns. They were called LITE and were
described as being “a third less serious than regular
greeting cards.” This description was, of course, an
allusion to the solecism that has been used to promote
Miller Lite: “Lite has a third less calories than their
regular beer.” In 1986, the Johnson's Wax people introduced
Glade Light , an aerosol air freshener with less
than half the perfume of regular sprays. In the same
year, Jhirmack introduced Lite Shampoo, Lite Conditioner ,
and Lite Mousse , which are designed to clean,
condition, and style one's hair without build-up.
The use of lite/light has extended beyond product
names. In such cases, the term may be used in a
descriptive sense to indicate that something is less intense
than its nonlight counterpart. Often, however,
lite/light is used humorously, or even caustically.
Low-impact aerobics have been called lite aerobics .
In music, there are Lite Rock and Lite FM . Book
editor Henry Kisor used the term Lite Mystery to refer
to a book “with only half the calories of a regular
whodunit” ( Chicago Sun-Times , July 24, 1987). Regarding
The Harvard Lampoon parody of USA Today ,
publisher Joe Armstrong declared, “We're kind of like
USA Today Lite ” ( USA Today , September 15, 1986).
Newsweek Lite is what one critic called People Weekly
( Chicago Tribune , January 20, 1988). Picture Week ,
which died after two extensive market tests by Time
Inc., was called People Lite by some skeptics at Time
Inc. because the publication was designed for those
who think there is too much to read in People (New
York , January 6, 1986). The television show West 57th
was called “CBS' lite news show” by People's TV critic,
Jeff Jarvis ( People Weekly , September 9, 1985).
Lite College is what Stanley Mieses proffered the
student who “seeks an education that is tasteful without
being fulfilling [and] degrees [that are] based on a
curriculum that is one third less challenging” ( The
Atlantic , October 1983). The Lite Fight , which consists
of “a simple opener and a swift final blow,” is
what columnist Judy Markey offered the couple who
want to save time with a pared-down version of the
“fundamental, tedious, classic argument” ( Chicago
Sun-Times , July 10, 1986).
In the political arena, Gary Hart, who tried so
desperately to emulate the late John F. Kennedy, was
called “the Kennedy lite candidate” ( Chicago Tribune ,
January 20, 1988). Robert Dole had the title New Dole
Lite bestowed upon him because he was perceived to
be “less acerbic [and] more personal [ sic ]” than he
previously had been ( Time , November 16, 1987).
A metaphor for our time. That, according to some
behavioral scientists, is what lite/light has become in
the years since the first Miller Lite commercial aired in
July 1973. These concerned sociologists and psychologists
maintain that we Americans want not only beer
that is low in calories, cigarettes that are low in tar,
and foods that are low in substances such as salt, sugar,
fat, and cholesterol; we also want reduced-effort cures
for our ailments, reduced-work jobs, and reduced-commitment
relationships. That is why these specialists
in human behavior have declared the 80s to be the
Lite/Light Decade .
“State of Washington charges for certified birth, death,
marriage or disillusions....” [From Connecticut Society of
Genealogists Newsletter, . Submitted
by ]
“Audi's at reduced savings.” [An ad in The Hartford
Courant , . Submitted by .]
Crime Dictionary
This is a revision of the 1982 dictionary reviewed
in the Autumn 1985 [XII,2] issue of VERBATIM. The
price has increased from $10.95 to $24.95 and it would
appear that four pages have been added. I commented
then that Mata Hari and Judge Roy Bean were both in
but that Doc Holliday was missing: Holliday is still on
vacation and now the old Bean has joined him. I commented
then that French vache `cop' had been omitted
from the foreign supplement: it is still missing. The
entry for big boy tomato , on which I had commented,
is no longer there, though big boy `heroin' is there.
It is difficult to compare the two editions. Though
the dust-jacket blurb promises that 1500 new terms
were added, it is not easy to see where, and if, in order
to fit them in, hundreds of entries were deleted, that
diminishes the value of the book. There is no reason to
assume that a 1982 book of 231 pp. selling for $10.95
should yield a 1988 book of 550pp. at $24.95, but one
might have expected more: in light of the information
that inflation over the past six years has averaged about
3%, one might expect the same book to cost as much
as $13.95 today, even allowing for a 1.7% increase in
its length (4 pages). For $24.95 we ought to have the
1500 new entries and the old ones besides (revised, as
necessary). If you have the 1982 edition, I see no justification
for buying the new one merely to line the
publisher's pockets.
Laurence Urdang
The Dictionary of Gambling & Gaming
The language of gambling and gaming might be
classified as a blend of slang and jargon: the former
seems almost obvious; the latter cannot be denied because
there are so many technical terms involved. The
author, Professor of English and Linguistics at the University
of Nevada (Las Vegas--where else?), former
president of the American Dialect Society, erstwhile
field researcher for DARE and contributor to many
journals (including VERBATIM, mentioned on p. xiii but
ignored by whoever wrote the dust-jacket blurb, presumably
because it was not deemed to be among the
“important” ones), has spent many years compiling
this dictionary. The book is done “on historical principles”--that
is, it relies for its defining and other evidence
on citations drawn from a great many
sources--and it is all the more interesting for that.
The ordinary entry is structured to show the headword
or phrase, in boldface, followed by an italicized
part-of-speech label, followed by the definition, then
the source or sources. The really good stuff shows up,
though, when citations are given, for many of them
are lively:
“A” card, n. A certificate issued by a law-enforcement
agency indicating security clearance
for a casino employee. See also 50 CARD and SHERIFF'S
CARD.
1963 Taylor Las Vegas 100. No inside man can work
on the Strip without the county's “50” card, or
downtown without the city's “A” card, signifying
clearance.
1983 Clark Oral Coll. We used to call a work permit
an A card, but since Metro was formed [Las
Vegas Metropolitan Police, combining city and
county police], we just call it and the fifty card a
sheriff's card.
one hand on the dice, n. phr. In bank craps, a
command from the stickman or boxman to a player
to pick up and throw the dice with a
single hand. Compare NO DICE and NO ROLL.
1984 Martinet Oral Coll. The house doesn't want
a shooter to use two hands in handling the dice.
It's too easy to pull a switch. If somebody uses
two hands, like cupping the hands and blowing
on the dice, the stick or somebody will yell,
“one hand on the dice, shooter.” If there's
anything suspicious about the move, the stick
will kill the dice [stop the dice while they are
rolling] and shove them to the boxman. He has
to say “no roll” quickly so there won't be a
beef.
second dealing, n. The act of dealing a card
other than the top card on a pack.
1891 Hoffman Baccarat. There is, however, an
expedient familiar to conjurers as “changing a
card,” which, with a little modification, is
extensively used by the cardsharping fraternity
under the name of “second dealing.” The result
of the sleight is that the dealer, while apparently
giving the top card in the usual way, actually
gives the second card instead of it.
Clark relies to some extent on oral collections, his own
and that of Thomas A. Martinet, which have been
built up over the years. One is tempted to envision
Clark, “wired,” hanging about in gambling dens; but
anyone familiar with the casinos around the world
knows that those glittery palaces could scarcely be so
characterized. Damon Runyon's ghost (or the ghosts of
some of the personnel who “worked” his novels) will
not be in evidence here.
According to the Dictionary, a chute is the name
for the slot (over the drop box ) through which the
dealer pushes the money paid for chips at a gaming
table. According to Monte Carlo folklore, it was a
slide, accessible only through a trap-door, that emptied
out into the Mediterranean far below: the bodies
of gamblers who had taken their own lives after losing
the family fortunes were dispatched through the chute
into oblivion. What happens to bodies in Atlantic City,
Las Vegas, and other gambling hells is not revealed in
this book, but one can be sure that those who run the
establishments do not take kindly to losers who ask for
their money back, explaining that they did not know
that they were playing “for keeps.”
There have been other dictionaries on the subject:
Clark lists the important ones as Sources at the end of
this volume. But this work is probably the best of them
all. The Dictionary of Gambling & Gaming is not a
gamble, and anyone putting down his $48 will be betting
on a sure thing.
Laurence Urdang
Bloomsbury Good Word Guide
Some very talented people have brought their
knowledge to bear on everyday questions and
problems of language in this book: Martin Manser,
whose Penguin Wordmaster Dictionary was favorably
reviewed here [XIV, 2]; Betty Kirkpatrick, editor of
Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary ; Jonathon
Green, compiler of the Thesaurus of Slang, Newspeak ,
and a Dictionary of Jargon (soon to be reviewed here);
and John Silverlight, who writes a language column in
The Observer , which I have not seen. From such a
formidable team, one should expect a good Good
Word Guide .
This book suffers from the essential problem
shared with all other books of reference: however
sound the advice they give, it is useless and meaningless
if it is not looked up. That might seem too much of
a truism even for me to express, but let me explain.
Many people feel that educational systems everywhere
have deteriorated to an unconscionably low level and
that students are no longer taught (in particular) English
grammar and usage the way they once were. In
the “good old days,” when the system was presumably
better, many books on usage were also published, so
one must conclude that although students then might
have been “exposed” to grammar and usage, they did
not learn it. Yet, one does have the (possibly romantic)
impression that even though grammar and usage were
not properly learned, at least enough of a subliminal
impression of them was retained by students to lead
them to doubt a construction when they encountered
it, driving them to check it in a Fowler or some other
work. What I am getting at is that more and more
people today seem to be less and less aware of any but
their own way of using the language, either because
they are no longer exposed to the writings of great
authors, or because they are not taught grammar and
usage and style, or both. The only way students can be
taught to improve their use of any language is by compelling
them to use it, chiefly by requiring of them on
a regular basis, preferably not less often than once a
week, a piece of writing which is gone over carefully
for usage and grammar to ensure a compatibility with
a standard to be devoutly wished for if not achieved.
After five years or more of such exercise, even if the
individual cannot recall the difference between imply
and infer , at least it is likely that whenever a choice is
encountered a small bell will ring somewhere in the
recesses of his mind, recalling a long-forgotten paper
for which the grade might have been reduced because
of a failure to know the difference. If this were a Rube
Goldberg contraption, this recollection would remind
the writer of the grease spot on page 2, caused by his
having eaten a Big Mac, the memory of which conjures
up such a vivid image that the writer opens his
mouth to take a bite, and a string attached to his lower
jaw releases a mouse, the sight of which arouses a cat
which chases it, causing the mouse to squeal, awakening
a midget who stretches, tripping open a trapdoor;
through the trapdoor falls a usage book, sliding down
a chute into the hands of the writer.
Would that life were so simple!
There appears to be nothing remaining to prompt
people to use usage books--indeed, reference books of
any kind. In a time when professional writers write
things like, “Neither Lord King nor Sir Colin Marshall
... were available for comment...” (and worse),
one cannot accuse them of having made an error of
judgment because that implies an awareness of choice;
in order to have a choice, one must know of alternatives,
and I am ineluctably drawn to the conclusion
that people write the way they do because they know
of no alternative.
Those who publish usage books seem to believe
that sometime, somewhere, there will be people who,
when they use neither , will immediately rush to their
Good Word Guide to find out whether it takes a singular
or a plural verb. That, as we all know, is a forlorn
hope (to abuse a Dutch cliché): those who “know” that
when two or more people or things are the subject of a
verb you have to use were , not was , regardless of the
context, are like those who “know” (like the people at
Elizabeth Arden) that millennium is spelled with one
n, who “know” that it is Parmagiana , not Parmigiana
(like the people at Burger King), and who have no
doubt that baking soda, baking powder, washing soda,
and ice-cream soda are all the same thing. The cause
would appear to be lost when one takes note that the
only pronunciation recorded in British dictionaries for
machismo is “makizmo,” as if it were derived from
Italian: even a spelling pronunciation would have been
preferable.
Given the nature of the publishing business today,
it is probably not at all surprising to see another usage
book (bearing in mind that the Fowler is being updated
by Robert Burchfield), though, if you believe all
the foregoing palaver, no one will ever refer to it. All
that having been said, it must be acknowledged that as
long as people buy books, publishers do not really
much care whether they are read, used as doorstops,
or for propping up a sagging curio cabinet.
Turning to the Introduction, written by Betty
Kirkpatrick, we read, “There is a school of thought
prevalent mainly among older people which seeks to
impose a kind of restriction on language that is not
imposed on other areas of life.” [p. v] I guess that
“older” means `anyone older than Kirkpatrick,' which I
happen to be; but, while it is a matter of fact (and of
record) that I do seek to impose restrictions, they are
directed against inept, ineffectual, inaccurate language
and poor style. Moreover, who says I don't seek
to impose restrictions on other areas of life? I despise
bad art, hypocrisy and other forms of dishonesty and,
in general, execrate any policy or behavior that interferes
with the rights and freedoms of others.
Having relegated conservatism and old fogeyism
to one another, Kirkpatrick asks [p. vi], “Should we say
it wasn't I or it wasn't me ; between you and me or
between you and I; different from, different to , or
different than; less bottles of milk or fewer bottles of
milk ?” (In my own recommended usage, when it
comes to milk, it makes no difference; but if you are
talking about beer or gin, then neither is acceptable.)
What does that word should mean? Smacks of old
fogeyism, does it not?
Further down page vi: “Where a supposed alternatives
is in fact wrong this is clearly stated.” Wrong ?
Who is the old fogey now, Kirkpatrick? Again and
again we read about “the careful user, who wishes to
use English correctly and congently” in contrast to “the
run-of-the-mill user, who frequently sacrifices care and
correctness in the interests of speed.” To impute such
sacrifices to a desire for speed is not only a misinterpretation
of the evidence but a curious thing to say, for
those who are in a hurry are scarcely likely to stop
everything, pick up this (or any other book) to check
something, and then resume their headlong plunge
into the solecistic abyss. Are not the “run-of-the-mill
users” really just “the careless users, who [as they
would probably say] could care less about using English
correctly and cogently”?
The most attractive thing about this book is the
writing, which, for the most part, is simple, clear,
straightforward, and readable. In short, the book is
“user-friendly.” It is essentially a British work for the
British market (or for people who want to use English
the way the British do). The entries cover spelling,
pronunciation, grammar, punctuation, usage, buzz
words, and subsets of all of those. The advice is direct
(if old-fogeyish):
Alternative should not be used in place of alternate.
[Deceptively] is frequently misused....
[D]espite of is incorrect, and it is never necessary
to precede either despite or in spite of with but.
To avoid mistakes, remember the a in aircraft and
hangar.
...And so on. In other words, one gets the impression
that the convervatism criticized on page v was
promptly forgotton on page vi. Inevitably, I have some
suggestions and criticisms to offer:
It would have been useful, when discussing the
spelling of gynaecology , to have added a word on its
pronunciation.
A note on custom (Brit.) versus business (U.S.)
might prove helpful.
At the entry for bi -, the definition of bicentennial
as `every two hundred years' omits mention of its more
commonly encountered use as a noun (along with bi-centenary )
meaning `two-hundredth anniversary.”
A note on annual would have been useful to criticize
the usage “First Annual Competition.”
There are some typographical errors, as in the
second pronunciation of dinghy , where the roman “i”
should have been in italics. The bad hyphenations,
apparently performed by a (feeble-minded, misprogrammed)
computer and not reviewed by a
(knowledgeable) proofreader, are inexcusable in a
book of this kind: “buc-ket” (at - ful ); prop-osed (at
irony ); “sing-ular” ( at kind of ); “trad-itionally” (at or);
“ostentati-ous” (at ostensible ), etc. The worst and most
embarrassing--if these sorts of things can still embarrass
publishers -- is “spel-ling,” which occurs at Americanism
and again at your or you're ?, from which it is
picked up for reproduction on page xi of the front
matter.
The writing falters in the entries for imply or infer ?
and centre on or centre around ?
A funny thing or two happened in the pronunciation
key: the distinction is made between r as the symbol
for the initial sound in rim and rr for the medial
sound in marry . Although these are different sounds in
many British English dialects, they are not only allophonic
but in complementary distribution (that is,
they never exchange places), hence do not need separate
symbols. Also, the editors have avoided the schwa
\?\, preferring to resurrect the antediluvian system
used by Merriam-Webster in the Second Edition of
their Unabridged (and since abandoned by almost
everyone). Even in the “ah-OO-gah,” or “moo-goo-gaipan”
school of pronunciation, the unstressed vowel is
rendered by a uniform symbol, usually “uh.”
At and/or we read, “ cotton and/or nylon socks , for
example, means `cotton socks, nylon socks, and socks
made from a mixture of cotton and nylon.' ” To me, it
means, `cotton socks, or nylon socks, or both': there is
nothing inherent in the example even hinting at the
existence of socks made of a nylon and cotton mixture.
In the matter of Celsius versus centigrade , the
point is not that they are “identical” (which is ambiguous
for `very similar' and `the same thing'), but that
they are the same thing: the scale formerly called centigrade
was renamed in 1948 to honor Anders Celsius,
the 18th-century Swedish astronomer who devised it.
Information on American usage is treated inconsistently
and, as the book is for the British user, might
well have been eliminated altogether.
There is no entry for free gift , just as obnoxious in
Britain as anywhere else English is used.
An entry on this or that ? would have been in order,
chiefly to cover its usage as a pronoun or pronominal
adjective of reference.
In the entry for former or latter ? the advice is
given to write, “ The killer left...in a stolen car; this
[not the latter ] was later found... .” I do not consider
that good writing.
As for the English word forte `strength,' it is not
the feminine form of the French adjective fort `strong'
but an English “feminization” of the French noun fort
`strength.' The pronunciation “for-tay” is an illiteracy,
scarcely attributable (as given here and in various dictionaries)
to a confusion with the musical direction so
pronounced because that is a loanword from Italian:
those who know about musical directions are not likely
to blunder that badly.
If enough people buy this book, it will soon need
a second printing which, it is hoped, will include some
of the foregoing (not these ) recommendations.
Laurence Urdang
“Free lays to the first 50 people!!” [From an invitation to
a “Blue Hawaii” Beach Party in Staff Bulletin No. 31, p. 6, of
the Madison Area (Wisconsin) Tech College. Submitted by
.]
Scrubs Wormwood for Gall
According to the EFL Gazette [June 1988], a
judge in Birmingham, England, was outraged that a
Pakistani, resident in Britain for 23 years, had the
effrontery to be so ignorant of English as to need an
interpreter in court; he sentenced the culprit to two
years' probation with the condition that he learn the
language.
One of the worst decAIDS in memory, the theme song
of the '80s ought to be
Every little breeze
Seems to whisper “lues.”
Bardoubling
When Imogen rhapsodizes on the immensity of
her love for her banished husband she insists it is beyond
beyond . For many years I have been captivated
by that phrase, created by the doubling of a fairly
ordinary preposition/noun, now magically employed
in just that relationship. This expression of infinity
produces a stunning effect, one not likely with two or
three discrete words. Shakespeare has coined an expansive
image out of the minimum arrangement of
this simple word. And beyond beyond describes the
poet himself, in his surpassing power of imagination
and his unparalleled gift for language.
Thus inspired, I dreamed up a new word game.
For the moment, call it “Doubling.” The player who
has devised a `double' provides to the others a definition,
whereupon they try to respond with the precise
double. Example: what has the cobbler when only one
shoe form remains? Obvious answer, his last last . Or,
last exam? Why, final final , of course. A verb/noun
entry: to tough out a storm, that is, to weather
weather . More doubles, minus definitions, are: cozy
cozy, March march, short short, fair fair , and so on.
Our rules for playing are: capitalized words or
proper names are allowed, but redundant entries are
not; slick slick does not qualify. Nor do hyphenated
phrases, such as go-go, no-no , which are merely intensification.
The two words must be identical in spelling,
but not in capitalization. However, players might well
make their own rules.
This game was invented as `More matter for a May
morning' when my wife and I drove last month from
West Texas to Hamilton, Montana, a goodly distance,
be assured. The scenery was not always breathtaking,
so a new word game (verbal, no paraphernalia) was
needed to keep us awake. To honor the source of its
inspiration, should we perhaps entitle it “Bardling,” or
how about “Bardoubling”? Robert D. Anson
According to The Times [19 May 1988], Maria
Tandy immigrated to Britain from Gyomaendrod,
Hungary, in 1938 to work as a servant. Within a short
time, her employer had been sent to India, costing her
the position, and she learned of the death of her
mother. The shock was severe enough to strike her
dumb, and she was committed to a London hospital.
When she recovered her power of speech, her English
was so bad that she could not make herself understood,
and she languished in the hospital for almost 40
years--till recently, when the hospital began to make
arrangements to close and move her elsewhere. An
interpreter was called in, investigated her background
and story, and discovered that some of her sisters still
lived in Hungary. Miss Tandy, now 78, will rejoin her
family to live out her years.
To Mr. Sebastian's most enjoyable article, “Red
Pants” [XV,3] may I presume to add “The Lay of the
Last Minstrel?”
The definition of schmeer [XV, 3] in Webster's
Third New International Dictionary is wrong--or at
least incomplete. Schmeer is a Yiddish verb meaning
`to apply an ointment or lubricant' and is commonly
used as a slang term for `bribe,' no doubt because a
bribe is seen as lubricating the wheels of bureaucracy.
I cannot imagine how it has come to mean the `entire
deal, whole package.'
Certainly VERBATIM is one of the most literate
publications in the English-speaking world today. Because
of that, I was surprised (and a little shocked) to
find the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin referred to as
“Miss” Stowe in Robert M. Sebastian's amusing article,
“Red Pants.” Surely every student of American literature
knows that Harriet Beecher Stowe was the sister of
the famous clergyman Henry Ward Beecher and the
wife of Dr. Calvin Stowe, another eminent divine.
[ Similarly from Col. Robert O. Rupp, Colorado
Springs.]
I am surprised that to my knowledge, there has
been no published response to ETYMOLOGICA OBSCURA
[XIV,4] with regard to the weasel . Surely there is
someone else alive besides myself who was taught the
dance as a child and was told that the weasel was part
of a stitching and weaving machine. During part of
the dance, partners did weave in and out. In another
part, the two head dancers skipped down the inside of
a double row and back outside, exchanging places
with the next in line, thus “popping the weasel.”
The following words would seem to indicate that
the weasel was a part of a sewing machine:
A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle.
That's the way the money goes--
“Pop!” goes the weasel.
Up and down the village street,
Up and down the teasle... etc.
The teasle is also part of a stitching machine. I don't
recall the “monkey” part of the verse, but this could be
the mechanism which “popped” the weasel by checking
the stitching and reversing the machine to start a
new row. Frequently, the thread broke at this time and
the machine had to be rethreaded.
Favorite Grammatical Games: Legerdemain in Two Senses and False Scents
In front of a cozy fire on a winter's night in the
library of one of John Cheever's country houses, on
the beach at Waikiki, even on a New York or London
commuter train, finding Legerdemain in Two Senses
and False Scents can be fun and games for all, and all
you need is (usually) some printed matter or even just
an inventive mind.
In Fowler's Modern English Usage one of the more
intriguing entries is Legerdemain in Two Senses .
Under that heading he points out the sneaky way in
which one word is often two-faced in the sense that its
first meaning gets switched when it is used the second
time in a sentence. For example, here is one that I have
slightly titivated:
Mark had now got his first taste of women, and it
was a taste that was to show many developments.
Fowler points out that the taste Mark got first was an
`experience'; the taste that showed developments was
an `inclination.' (It was a first taste of print that Mark
gets in Fowler, if you are wondering about that titivation.)
The technical name for the device is polyptoton .
In other words, what happens is something like
the legerdemain of a magician's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't.
Did you catch my alls in the first paragraph,
by the way? Let's look as a few other choice
specimens I have bagged:
It is dangerous to mess around with Ouija boards
... and it is dangerous to condone them.
The first dangerous means `harmful,' while the second
means `irresponsible.'
Pretty girls finish first, which is pretty unfair to
others.
The pretty pousse café is pretty hard to pour.
In the last two examples an adjective switches to an
adverb. An ultimate epitome of the case: “She's pretty
pretty.”
Sixty-five is just as safe as fifty-five, so it's safe to
allow the faster speed.
Or to give equal time, as it were:
55 is safer than 65 mph, so it is safer to keep the
limit at 55.
There is a nice touch of political legerdemain here,
you'll note, when the first safe(r) changes before our
very eyes from having a physical connotation to a
socio-political one.
There is a lovely example in Fowler about government ,
which shows how slack political phraseology
can turn out to be (we just dropped a False Scent --no
comma between the qualifiers of phraseology -- see below)
a black beast in any era; obviously the beast was
rampaging even in Fowler's golden days. We'll bring
things up to date by presenting his example in modern
dress:
Many third-world countries are virtually subject to
our American democratic government, but such
government has generally been held back by Congress
from taking any decisive action.
Sounds fair enough, surely? Ah, but you see there is a
subtle quick-change there, and, these days, we should
wonder whether it was intentional or just imprecise
grammar. The first government really means `governance'
while the second means `governing body.' True,
there is an acceptable synonymity here but it is not to
be used in the same sentence.
And how about:
We must indeed all hang together, or... we shall
all hang separately.
Such sloppiness can indeed become rich fare for the
Supreme Court.
Now we come to those delightful False Scents .
They are sly. By all means read Fowler's delightful
statement of affairs about False Scents --he generates a
wonderfully, though quite unwitting, humorous cameo
of writer and reader virtually calling each other fools.
The reader wins because he is right--it is up to the
writer to ensure that the reader should not be given
any False Scents . Here are two additional ones to the
four examples Fowler gives that cause a reader to go
down the wrong track in a sentence, ending in a sort of
double-take:
Arthur found, after taking a wrong turning and
going right past the house, and having looked for it
carefully the day before, that he had left his pen
and briefcase at home.
And we all thought he was going to find his dream
house--or perhaps a million-dollar baby in a five-and-ten-cent
store. Or as Fowler would (perhaps) say,
Arthur found a noun clause instead of a good solid
common noun he could mortgage or marry.
Leaning forward, with her hand shielding the
strong sunlight from her eyes, she was looking,
Arthur thought, particularly beautiful and poised.
We are beginning to get angry with Arthur. We all
thought she was looking for him at least; certainly not
for a mere predicate adjective.
Watch for more Favorite Grammatical Games in
following issues of VERBATIM.
Brahman or brahman?
For several generations the Sanskrit word brahman
(pronounced BRAAHMAN, the first vowel sounds as
in the English word father ) has been used in the English
language. Until a decade or so ago it was spelt
brahmin , which is now given as an alternate spelling,
and has survived in such expressions of common occurrence
as Boston Brahmins . While every literate American
may not be familiar with the expression, those
who are will know that a Boston Brahmin refers to the
aristocrats or first families of Boston such as the Cabots
and the Lodges. My concern is not with the meaning
of the expression but with the persistent capitalization
of the word.
Derived from Brahma `the First Principle or Supreme
Being of some Hindu philosophical systems
such as Vedanta,' a brahman is primarily a person who
believes in Brahma , or Brahman . By extension brahman
came to mean a `member of the sacred or sacerdotal
caste,' as Webster has it. In order to avoid confusion
I shall henceforth spell the word without capitalization
to denote the `caste' and with a capital to
imply `the Absolute.' This in fact is the crux of the
problem. When we use the word Absolute with a capital
“a” we know that it has a very specific application.
It is high time that brahman be so spelt when the caste
is implied, reserving Brahman when `the Absolute' is
meant. This will not only help the reader to distinguish
between the two meanings but will conform to
conventional capitalization in the English language.
The error was originally made by the British in
17th-century India. Not only were the brahmans the
best educated Hindus they met, but also, more important,
it was soon realized that among the Hindus the
brahman was a much more “sacred” group than say
the molla is among the Muslims, the rabbi among the
Jews, or the priest among the Christians. From time
immemorial the brahmans of India had insisted upon
their social and spiritual superiority. In many of the
common Sanskrit prayers a brahman is invoked or imprecated
along with the gods. To do reverence to a
brahman was to do reverence to Brahman, for a brahman
was not simply the intermediary between man
and the gods: he was a god.
Confronted with this attitude and somewhat
awed, the British acknowledged their respect by capitalizing
the word. But what is even more curious is
that they also capitalized the expressions for the three
other castes, viz. kshatriya `martial class,' vaisya `farmers
and merchants,' and sudra `menials.' It is remarkable
that this anomaly still persists, even in many modern
sources.
The English-speaking world, expecially Great
Britain, Canada, the U.S.A., and even India claim to
be the bastions of democracy, which clearly should not
recognize caste or class distinctions. Is it not ironic
then that they should still perpetuate so blatant a fallacy?
Compilers of our dictionaries should stop capitalizing
the words for the four Hindu castes and retain
the custom only for Brahma or Brahman when it implies
the Absolute. Not only will it avoid confusion
among users of dictionaries, but it will restore the
preeminence of Brahma or Brahman while reducing
the brahmans to the status of the rest of us mortals,
where they really belong.
Harare (Reuter) - A Latin greeting from the Pope
brought Zimbabwe's Parliament to a halt when the
Justice Minister, Mr Emmerson Mnangagwa, objected
to the use of what was not an official language. [ The
Times , 30 September 1988]
On January 12th, 1989, Carole Leonard, who compiles
a chatty column for The Times of items picked up
on the Rialto in The City, reported that a “reader in
Surrey” (not, for a change, “Disgusted,” Tunbridge
Wells) received a tax form with the instruction “Send
the cheque and payslip unfolded to the Collector in the
envelope provided.” “I looked inside,” wrote the mystified
reader, “but couldn't find him.” A few pages on,
the Scots Law Report carried the headline, “Causing
death by reckless driving of person unborn at time of
accident.”
Maxey Brooke's article, “Texican” [XV,2], was an
interesting comment on a phenomenon that must fascinate
anybody who loves words. Who would have
thought that a word like quirt , which I had always
associated with hounds and stirrup cups, came from
the Spanish for `rope,' or `string,' cuerda . The meagre
sources I have at home bear out that origin, however.
I hope Mr. Brooke will forgive my picking a couple
of nits. He implies that chile and tamale are Mexican
words that have passed into English usage. They
may be Texican in that form, but in the original Mexican
they had to be chile and tamal ( chilis and tamales
in the plural, of course.) Chile is the country, and even
the most ignorant Mexican would not call one tamal a
tamale .
The word transfers work in the opposite direction,
too, of course. Witness the Mexican and Central American
use of parquear `to park,' instead of the more
traditionally Spanish estacionar . A dancing in Buenos
Aires is a rather low-class nightclub. For wrestling, or
what is loosely called wrestling in the United States
and Latin America, the people of the Southern Cone
of South America went to the English catch-as-catchcan .
If you are familiar with the difficulty Spanish
speakers have with dentals and fricatives when these
are not separated by vowels, you can understand that
the task of producing a string of sounds like that tends
to stop a conversation, if not the speaker. So it was soon
shortened to catchascan , and then ultimately to catch ,
leaving the t in the written form, although it is foreign
to Spanish orthography. So in Buenos Aires, if you
want to inform somebody you are going to the wrestling
matches, you say “ Voy al catch .”
I guess people are a little nutty if they take a
delight in these things.
David W. Porter [XV,3] tells us that the Japanese
“produce such monstrosities as sutoraike for English
`strike'...” Sad to say, he is doubly wrong. In baseball,
the transliteration is equivalent to sutoraiku ; in
labor relations (an earlier borrowing) to sutoraiki .
As for Gone with the Windo , he errs in leaving
Gone with the untouched and his Windo would correctly
be Uindo . Others of his assertions are not amenable
to brief correction.
Mr. J.A. Davidson should not adopt the pronunciation
of scone to rhyme with `bone'--at any rate not
because Victoria, where he lives, is “veddy English.”
That pronunciation is a shibboleth, or rather sibboleth,
in English English in terms of “U” and “non-U”--as
John Betjeman noted years ago in his cautionary
poem How to Get On in Society , which ends:
Milk and then just as it comes, dear?
I'm afraid the preserve's full of stones;
Beg Pardon, I'm spoiling the doileys
With afternoon tea-cakes and scones.
(The first line of the poem, in case anyone wants to
read more of it, is “Phone for the fish-knives, Norman.”)
Mr. Davidson misquotes Gowers, who does not say
that the Scottish pronunciation is `skawn' (which
would rhyme with `dawn.') What he gives is
`sk\?\n'--with a `short sign' over the o --rhyming with
`don,' which is socially correct south of the Border as
well as north.
A friend showed me VERBATIM [XIV,3] in which I
noted the paragraph on page 2 about names for subatomic
particles. Actually, the word quark is in the
OED as a verb meaning `croak,' with 19th-century references
to frogs, rooks, and herons. This seems more
relevant to Joyce's use than the German word for
`curds.' This was missed by Tindall in his Reader's
Guide to Finnegans Wake and McHugh in his Annotations
to FW , while Glasheen has it in her 3rd Census .
Much could be said about particle names. SUSY
(pronounced as spelt), or supersymmetry theory, is
prolific. Each known elementary particle is associated
with a hypothetical complementary particle (recalling,
surely unintentionally, “sosie sesthers,” ( FW , p.3):
SUSY = ? French sosie = `twin'). Most Joycean are
slepton (partner to the leptons) and wino (partner to
the W boson) ... as well as squark . There's lots more
in the field (or not in it), such as techniquarks,
glueballs , and ghosts (which are not really there).
Further to “Do Mistake--Learn Better” [XV,1]:
During the Vietnamese conflict, the country was filled
with mangled English-Vietnamese-English translations,
especially in correspondence between assorted
offices of the two nations. The overwhelming majority
of the confusion stemmed from the fact that the only
“complete” bilingual dictionary readily available to
the Vietnamese was a two-volume monstrosity by a
French professor in the 1920s. I cannot answer for his
command of Vietnamese; his grasp of English was, to
put it mildly, feeble and slippery.
The Central Intelligence Agency was widely
known as the “Inside Detective Bureau”; we eventually
started to use it ourselves. A phrase commonly used by
Vietnamese commands to describe what they were doing
to North Vietnam was “foil up their dark schemes.”
I had a Mrs. Ban assigned to me as a translator;
she spoke exquisite French and fluent--if somewhat
stilted--English. On one occasion I asked her to translate
a document into Vietnamese describing the modus
operandi of the Soviet Illegals program. It was then
passed to a Vietnamese office, which a week later returned
it, politely reporting that they couldn't make
head or tail of it. I took a paragraph at random and
passed it to another translator, asking him to render it
into English, and the problem became immediately
apparent.
The original contained the sentence, “The Soviet
Illegal, blending with the populace, is free of the unwelcome
limelight cast on the personnel of the Soviet
embassy by the local security forces.” What came back
was, “The police threw a burning citrus tree at the
Slavic bandit, who was disguised as a crowd; they
missed him but hit the Russian ambassador.”
I called for Mrs. Ban and told her I would read
the document to her, paragraph by paragraph. She
was to ask any questions she wanted to, and when she
understood the passage, she was to render it freely into
Vietnamese, without attempting to make a verbatim
translation. It worked beautifully.
In the course of the first session with Mrs. Ban,
the word cipher came up; she did not understand it. I
started to explain, and then noticed a copy of The
Saturday Review on my desk. “Here,” I said, turning
to the Literary Cryptogram. “This is a cipher. It's a
short quotation from some well-known author, with
his name. For every letter, another one has been substituted,
so you can't read it. You have to puzzle it out.”
She picked up the magazine, inspected the cryptogram,
frowned, nodded, and left the office. She was
back within fifteen minutes with the correct solution
inked in over the mono-alphabetical cipher. I was
stunned.
“Mrs. Ban,” I said, “Very few Americans could
work that out without being taught how to go about
it. Would you mind explaining how you did it?”
“Sure. You say name is well-known author. Name
is XQ PLRZADLTRQTXF. I look at first name, two letters.
Only American first names with two letters are Ed and
Al , and you got no famous writers in America or England
named Ed or Al . So I think maybe particule --“De”
or “La”--hey! Maybe “La Rochefoucauld
!” And, yes, ls, as, os , and us all come out in right
place. So I write in up above, and rest is easy. Fun! You
got more?”
I gave her a raise on the spot.
In “The Joys and Oys of Yiddish” [XV,3], Messrs.
Lederer and Schenkerman put the word cockamamy
(or cockamamie ) at the head of a list of Yiddish words
found in English as published in Webster's Third New
International Dictionary . I have spoken Yiddish since
childhood, have a fairly wide reading knowledge and
acquaintance with various levels and styles of the language,
but have never come across a word or phrase
resembling cockamamy . It simply has no meaning in
that language. Leo Rosten may list it in his book, The
Joys of Yiddish , but he fails to make a positive identification.
As for gun moll , there was no phrase in the
Warsaw or Odessa underworlds like “gonif molly.” If I
am not mistaken, the word moll is a well-rooted native
word in English going back at least as far as Daniel
Defoe's Moll Flanders . The gun part derives plainly
from the English gun .
As for schnoz , it does sound Yiddish, there does
exist a verb schneitzen `to blow one's nose,' and the
shn - combination does connote something to do with
the nose; but there is no word shnozzle in Yiddish, only
noz or, in the alternate dialect, nuz . Phudnik is not a
Yiddish word but was clearly formed on the Yiddish
root -nik , which also occurs in Slavic. I don't know
where the -sh sound arose in nebbish , but in all eastern
European dialects of Yiddish the word is nebbikh or
nebbakh , with a velar fricative sound that is rendered
as -sh by speakers who find that easier to pronounce.
Concerning Thomas H. Middleton's “Muskrats `R'
Not?” [XV,3], according to the album cover of my LP,
Ory's Creole Trombone (Good Time Jazz, L12004),
the origin of the name of “Muskrat Ramble” was at the
session at which the newly composed tune was first
recorded. As the musicians were leaving, a record
company representative asked the name of the new
piece, which Kid Ory had not yet named. Lil Armstrong,
who was the pianist for the session, improvised
the answer, “That's named `Muskrat Ramble'; isn't
that right, Red?” (Red was Kid Ory's nickname.) Ory
replied, “That's right.” I remember that Lil Armstrong
was quoted on the record sleeve as giving this explanation;
although I still have the LP, the sleeve was destroyed
some years ago. The blurb went on to explain
that at a subsequent time some record company executive
decided that “Muskrat Ramble” was too inelegant
a title and changed its name on future pressing to
“Muskat [or Muscat] Ramble.” My LP, from the 1950s,
gives the title as “Muskrat Ramble.”
As always, it was a delight to read the new VERBATIM.
It is even more fun, though, to catch our omniscient
editor in a small blooper. The comment on square
the circle in the review of Loose Cannons & Red Herrings
[XV,3] misses the point when it states, “...there
is no mathematical way of calculating the dimensions of
a square with the same area as that of a given circle.”
This classic geometrical problem requires that one start
with a given circle and construct a square of the same
area, using the straight-edge and compass, the only
tools permitted the geometer.
The mathematician, on the other hand, can calculate
the dimensions of such a square, to any desired
degree of accuracy, using simple algebra. You can
quibble, of course, that such an answer can never be
perfect, but that has nothing to do with the problem
of squaring the circle geometrically.
[ Similarly from Iraj Kalantari, Macomb, Illinois, and
James G. Wendel, Palo Alto .]
Pace Webster's Third [XV,3], but including the
word cockamamie in a Yiddish lexicon is questionable,
as is the definition given. As a youngster in The Bronx
in the early 1930s, I would occasionally take my windfall
of a few pennies to the local candy store and buy a
strip of cockamamies , `comic-style cartoons in brilliant
colors, each about an inch by an inch and a half,
transferable to forearm or forehead by wetting,' preferably
with saliva to make things agreeably messy. As we
grew older we came to realize that cockamamie was
merely a child's distortion of decalcomania . Later,
cockamamie came to mean `cheap, sleazy, gaudy,
trashy, junky'--but never “mixed-up, ridiculous.” I'll
accept the word as a Bronxism, but not as an exclusive
property of the Yiddish language.
Maxey Brooke writes [XV,2] that English tamale is
from Spanish tamale . There is, however, no such Spanish
word. Rather, two explanations may be offered for
this English word. My explanation is that English-speakers
borrowed Spanish plural tamales (whose singular
is tamal ), from which they back-formed a new
singular, tamale (i.e., the division into morphemes in
Spanish is tamal-es whereas English-speakers took it to
be tamale-s ). English has both frijol and frijole , the
latter of which may be explained in the same way:
English-speakers borrowed Spanish plural frijoles
(whose singular is frijol ), from which they back-formed
a new singular, frijole (again, the morpheme
division in Spanish is frijol-es whereas certain English-speakers
took it to be frijole-s ). English frijol , on the
other hand, is derived straightforwardly from the
Spanish singular.
A different explanation of tamale was offered in
American Speech 48, 3-4, 1973, p. 292: “Just as the
American recalls that French words should be stressed
on the final syllable, he recalls, or thinks he recalls,
that all Spanish words should end with a vowel: sombrero ,
señorita , noche and so on. These items are all in
the singular. Thus, by analogy, many Americans make
tamale , instead of the correct tamal , the singular of
tamales .... By the same analogy, equipal , the splint
and leather patio chair so popular in Mexico, becomes
equipale ....”
The second explanation is possible, though numerous
Spanish words end in a consonant and I don't
know how the two explanations could be verified. The
least one may say is that no English dictionary published
through 1987 gives a fully correct etymology for
tamale or frijol(e) .
An English noun which is definitely back-formed
from a plural is blints (often misspelled “blintz”). Yiddish
has (singular) blintse / (plural) blintses , hence
blints is an English innovation. Interestingly, whereas
tamale and frijole have acquired a nonetymological
vowel, blints has lost an etymological vowel. In general,
back-formation of new singulars from plurals is a
sign that the plural is textually more frequent than the
singular (indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary lists
only frijoles and no singular form whatsoever for
English).
After the new singulars emerged in English, new
plurals were formed. Although English tamales , frijoles ,
and blintses , as now usually pronounced, appear
to be derived from Spanish tamales , Spanish frijoles ,
and Yiddish blintses , they are actually innovations,
formed in English by the addition of English -s (in the
first two cases) or -es (in the third) to the innovative
English singulars. This is proven by the fact that the
English plurals are pronounced with [z] and not, as in
the case of the Spanish and Yiddish plurals, with [s].
That is, since Spanish or Yiddish [s] > English [z]
would be phonologically unlikely here, -s and -es in the
English plurals are the native English plural allomorphs
rather than Spanish- or Yiddish-origin allomorphs.
Only among the few people who pronounce
the English plurals with [s] are these words derived
from the plurals used in Spanish or Yiddish. Generally,
these are people strongly influenced by one of these
two languages.
Brooke's derivation of machete from Spanish macho
`male' is a folk etymology: the two words are unconnected
and the correct etymology may be found on
pp. 746-750 of vol. 3 of Joan Corominas and José A.
Pascual's Diccionario critico etimológico castellano e
hispánico (Madrid, Gredos, 1980).
“German Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl Sings With Doubleday.”
[From Publishers Weekly , . Submitted
by .]
Mrs. Malaprop in Mexico
Mrs. Malaprop is so English that I thought her
“nice derangement of epitaphs” was a glory
peculiar to our language. But then I lived in Mexico
and soon knew better. The first Mexican malapropism
I heard, or recognized as such, was spoken at Chole
Durán's refreshment booth in the plaza of Jocotepec,
Jalisco. Doña Faustina was bringing Chole up to the
minute, and in the course of her gossip she mentioned
that her niece Socorro had been grávida but was now
aliviada . Two young farmhands were also at the
booth, drinking in the prattle with their Pepsis. When
Faustina left, one of them asked the other, “Have you
ever been grávido ?”
“Just once, when I was ten. But my mother
bought me some pills and I got over it.”
Chole tried not to laugh, but she laughed. When
she explained to us that grávida means `pregnant,' the
farmhands loved the joke, their Indian eyes bright
with amusement. One of them explained that they
thought grávido was a more educated form of grave ,
which means `gravely ill.' As for aliviada , it means
being `alleviated or cured.' When a child is born, it is
as if the mother had recovered from a disease.
After that, with my ears attuned, I heard malapropisms
on all sides, and even recognized that I
committed them myself. For a while, I confused ejote
`string bean,' elote `corn on the cob,' and olote `corncob'
(I fired the water heater with dried corncobs).
Poor Lola, who cooked and cleaned for me, had to
divine what I meant when I asked for corncobs as a
dinner vegetable or remarked that we were almost out
of string beans for the water heater. I was also guilty of
asking her to serve a pork chop in adobe rather than
adobo . The latter is a sauce related to the mole that
Moctezuma served to Cortés. The former, of course, is
a mud of another color.
Even so, I never blundered as badly as the dowager
staying at the little Hotel La Quinta. She was on a
diet that forbade dessert and coffee, so she left the
dining room before the other guests. When she
reached the doorway she always turned, gave a stately
nod, and said, “Excusado.” Obviously she thought she
was saying, “Excuse me,” and no one could find the
courage to tell her that excusado was a euphemism for
what we call, among other things, the john.
In the back yard next to mine, young Mateo
sometimes raised his voice in malapropistic song. On
one occasion, what I heard over the wall was his version
of “Siete Leguas,” a ballad about Pancho Villa
that begins:
Seven Leagues was the horse
That Villa liked best.
But Mateo changed leguas to lenguas , which means
`tongues,' literally, or `languages.' Was this remarkable
horse a polyglot? No wonder Villa esteemed it. On
another, Mateo warbled “Ojitos de capulín,” a familiar
mariachi song. A capulín is a small, shiny-black fruit,
and the title means that the girl's “little eyes”--the
diminutive of affection, with no hint that she was
beady-eyed--were dark and lustrous. In Mateo's version,
capulín became chapulín , which means `grasshopper.'
So she was not beady-eyed, but bug-eyed.
Small children are often malapropists, especially
when they have to memorize texts they cannot understand.
My sister, when small, asked our parents if we
lived in America. On being assured that we did, she
asked why they told her in school that we live in Tizzavy.
It turned out that she was referring to “My country,
'tis of thee....”
Lola's daughter, Teresa, was almost as inventive,
and again it was the Lord's Prayer. In Spanish it begins,
“Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos, santificado
sea tu nombre.” Teresa changed cielos to celos and
santificado to santo pintado , so that in Biblical English
it comes out something like, “Our Father which art in
jealousies, painted saint be Thy name.” The first reminds
me of “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God,”
and the second is not as far-fetched as it seems. Although
santo means `saint,' a santo as an object means
a religious figure carved of wood, covered with gesso,
carved in detail, and then painted. Teresa might have
been thinking of the patron saint of Jocotepec, El señor
del monte `The Lord of the Mountain,' a nearly life-sized
santo of the crucified Christ that is believed to
have been found in the branches of a tree in the mountains
south of the village.
Finally, Lola, too, was a malapropist. I bought a
packet of Burpee's zinnia seeds in a pharmacy in Guadalajara,
and when the plants bloomed I asked her
what they were called in Spanish. “Normalginas,” she
said. Next day, showing them off to my landlord, I was
gently told that the correct word was “damasquinas,”
with its exotic evocation of damask and Damascus.
When I asked him what “normalginas” meant, if anything,
he said that Normalgina was the trade name of
a Mexican analgesic much like Anacin.
I decided to try it the next time I felt grávido .
“Major Ronald Ferguson, father of the Duchess of York,
has told the staff at his polo club that his daughter would not
enter a private London hospital where she will give birth
until Thursday.” [From the Detroit Free Press , . Submitted by .]
“Wednesday, September 2 will be declared a Monday for
purposes of class attendance. This designation of Wednesday
as a Monday is for the first week of Fall semester only.” [From
the University of Southern California catalogue. Submitted
by .]
“...more allegations of improper misconduct
...” [From the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal , . Submitted by .]
The Complete Plain Words
[A VERBATIM Book Club Selection.]
For years I have engaged in the often useful habit
of reading Forewords, Prefaces, Prolegomena, Introductions,
and other bits that appear at the beginnings
of books. It is a practice to be recommended for one or
more of several reasons: one can often be spared reading
through a boring, badly conceived, or abominably
written work; one can determine quite readily why the
book was written and what its argument, or point,
might be, then read the text to judge whether the
author's purpose has been carried out. Such front matter
(as it is more commonly called in the U.S.), or
prelims (so called in Britain), is usually written by the
author (or one of them). There is a Preface to this
book, written by the estimable Janet Whitcut, which I
shall get to in a moment. First, though, is an essay,
“What's the Usage?,” by the inestimable Joseph Epstein,
editor of American Scholar , professor of something
at Northwestern University, and self-styled
pseud. I hadn't noticed who had written the essay till I
encountered the following, barely three paragraphs
into the writing:
It is closer to the truth to say that woolly circumlocutions,
psychobabblous phrasing and sentiments,
and language used as if it were a game of horseshoes
(in which one expects points for being close)
offends me.
Well, they offends me too, especially when they
appears in the lead essay of a book on style and usage
and particularly when it are a book of this quality. I
saw little point in continuing reading Epstein when I
was sure that matters could only improve by turning to
Gowers, Greenbaum, and Whitcut, all of whom could
be relied on to make subjects and predicates agree in
number.
Putting outright, downright grammatical solecisms
aside, it would be pertinent to reiterate my own
attitude toward usage: as a linguist, I regard usage
clinically and would no more criticize a writer or a
speaker of any kind of English for “mistakes” than a
doctor would criticize a patient for contracting appendicitis
or the Malay waste-away; on the other hand, as
a writer (albeit a poor one), I attend to matters of style
(which includes usage and grammar, of course), not
only in others' writing but my own. As readers are
quick to point out, my attention to such matters occasionally
wanders, for which I offer no excuses. Yet the
sense of discovery in finding Epsteinisms is undiminished,
though any glee is mitigated by the feeling of
embarrassment undoubtedly shared among David R.
Godine, respected publisher, and Greenbaum and
Whitcut, respected colleagues and friends.
The first edition of The Complete Plain Words , an
edited amalgan of Plain Words (1948) and The ABC
of Plain Words (1951), appeared in 1954; an edition
revised by Sir Bruce Fraser was published in 1973; the
present work, published by Her Majesty's Stationery
Office (stolidly called “Her Britannic Majesty's Stationary
[ sic ] Office” on the copyright page) in 1986 to
celebrate its bicentennial, is a revision of Fraser's edition.
As Whitcut carefully indicates in her Preface,
chapters 3-14 and 18 are “almost pure Gowers.... In
this third edition `we' generally represents Greenbaum
and Whitcut....” I spent some time ferreting about
in the new material and am pleased to report (as I
suspected) a sane and sensible approach (in chapter 15)
to such topics as “The trend towards informality” (the
language, even in Britain, is loosening up), “The objections
to sexist language” (“Present usage is unstable.
...[O]fficial writers [ought] to take evasive action.”),
“The influence of science and technology” (“[ I ] nput
has become an overworked vogue word... [as has]
user-friendly ....”), “The influences of other varieties
of English” (in which one can find good examples
of so-called Americanisms that were formerly British).
The authors pull no punches, characterizing one
government memorandum as “spoilt by carelessness,
clichés and flaccidity,” another as “rather stilted...
[but] by no means outrageous,” a third as “verbose or
stilted,” and a fourth as “containing wording and
punctuation that is clumsy, ambiguous, and redundant.”
For each of five specimens selected for analysis
and comment, Greenbaum and Whitcut offer not only
criticism but cogent suggestions for improvement. The
sixth and seventh selections, one expository, one narrative,
merit the authors' praise: “good” and “graceful”
are used in the comments; other adjectives are clear
(structure), manageable (sentence length), appropriate
(vocabulary), delicate (shifts of language level),
and vivid .
The final chapter, 17, consists of a checklist of
“words and phrases to be used with care.” The inevitable
old chestnuts are here-- infer/imply , appraise/
apprise , etc.--but most of the 250 or so entries in these
70-odd pages deal with matters of style, word selection,
and the avoidance of pompous or meaningless
clichés. For instance,
Accordingly Prefer so or therefore.
According to You can replace `According to our
records' by `Our records show'....
Condition (noun) If you mean rule, says so.
...and so forth. Some of the entries are longer than
these, but not many. Missing is the horrid at this point
in time , but that probably occurs more in speech than
in writing. For a short list, it is a good one.
Of course, there is not much point in having any
list unless people use it, which brings me to my main
criticism of speakers and writers of a “certain” age (say,
under 40) and education level. To put the matter differently,
I could write an essay called “The Perils of
Literacy” or “A Little Literacy Is a Dangerous Thing.”
Much of the ineffectual use of language is traceable to
the fact that although many people want to improve
their language, they are completely unfamiliar with
the help available to them. How, for example, are
people to know whether to use infer or imply if they
are totally unaware that any problem exists? For generations,
people have pronounced the word KONtr\?\v\?\rsee;
then, some odd body came along saying k\?\nTROV\?\rsee,
and the faith of many speakers was shaken.
If they had looked it up in a dictionary, which lists the
pronunciation(s) used by a majority of speakers, k\?\nTROV\?\rsee
would never have surfaced.
To be useful, The Complete Plain Words and
other books like it must be read through . Then, when
people are about to use infer or imply , a small voice
should whisper, “I seem to recall that Gower [or
Fowler , or some other work, including every medium-sized
dictionary] had something on that,” occasioning
a quick look-up that would resolve the question at
once. But if people are not humble enough to doubt
their own control over the vast complexities of the language
and if, to boot, they are ignorant of the content
of even the most basic available resources, then any
hope of their learning how literate people express
themselves is lost.
Laurence Urdang
One Who Goes Everywhere: The Ubiquarian's Dictionary
Information specialists, psychologists, brain specialists,
and anyone else who wants to get into the act
have all speculated on the way the mind works. To be
persuaded about the myriad possibilities, one need
only visit a library. Tucked away in one corner is a
collection of books on how to improve your memory,
most of which offer different techniques. None suggests
plain rote drilling: all suggest a pattern of association,
some alphabetical, some psychological, some numerical,
and so forth. Each has validity for the “kind of
mind” a person has. Susanna Cuyler's book begins
with the suggestion “Make up a sentence, say it aloud.
For example, Ablaqueate ( to loosen ground around
roots ): `Absalom, come up from the lake and help me
ablaqueate.”' That might work for you, but I would
forget the sentence (especially Absalom, my main association
with the name being with Chaucer's ribald
Miller's Tale ).
Memorizing words is not the point of this book
which, in addition to two titles, has a subtitle: “A
literary distillation of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary,
Webster's International , and Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary
of Unusual, Obscure and Preposterous Words .”
The book is a list of words, with remarkably succinct
definitions, that have captured the author's fancy for
one reason or another. Some are interesting and have a
curiosity value ( spaneria `a scarceness of men'), others,
if learnt, would present some difficulties in fitting into
most conversations ( umber `sundial pointer's shadow').
Like any written work, this one could stand some improving
( urbicolous `urban domiciled' could, less awkwardly
have been `city-dwelling').
It is not often useful but frequently great fun to
have at hand a short, attractively packaged list of
weird and wonderful words to carry about in your
pocket. If you agree, send $10 to the address at the top
of this review. If the photograph on the back cover, of
an extremely attractive lady swinging, Tarzan-like,
through the jungle, is of Ms. Cuyler, send your order
in quickly, for she appears to be in sad need of a
wardrobe.
Laurence Urdang
The Facts On File Encyclopedia of Word and
Phrase Origins
This is a good book and an interesting book. According
to the author's Preface, it covers some 7500
words and phrases, and its great fault is that it lacks an
index. That is to say, there are about 4000 or so main
entries, the rest of the terms being discussed within the
entries; unless they begin with the same letter or
words, the user will be unable to find them without an
index. For example, tsar, tsarina , etc., are discussed at
czar , but there is no cross reference in the Ts for the
tsar words and, if you didn't think (or know) to look
under czar , you would think them missing. Publishers
ought to learn that they cannot always anticipate the
needs of users of books and that indexes are almost
invariably an aid in finding things.
My other complaint is about compositors (and
proofreaders) who set loose lines because they do not
know how to hyphenate the word they have carried
over to a following line. Today, compositors rely far too
much on the automatic hyphenation programs packaged
with their computer typesetting systems. A typical
example occurs (as one might expect) at the entry
for deipnosophist where a line that normally contains
about 50 characters (plus spaces), has been printed
with only 34 characters (plus spaces), mainly, apparently,
because no one knew where to hyphen Deipnosophistai ,
the first word on the next line. This rather ugly
phenomenon occurs here and there in this otherwise
attractive book.
Back to the contents. General dictionaries give
etymologies, albeit brief ones, of most of the words
they list and fulfill a useful, if limited function. Extensive
works, like the Oxford English Dictionary offer far
more elaborate information, including, where appropriate
(and available) valuable comments on the origins
of sense development. Etymological dictionaries
do pretty much the same, though for the most part
they, like the OED , eschew information about multiword
entries, idiomatic phrases, and such. Then there
are books, like Funk's A Hog on Ice and my own The
Whole Ball of Wax , that treat the origins of particular
kinds of expressions and, occasionally, words. Hendrickson's
book, EWPO for short, covers some standard,
single-word entries, some oddities, a number of
phrases and expressions, and a good selection of items
not covered by most of the other books.
Much of what appears is well established; some of
it is speculative, some taken from unreliable sources,
and some at variance with the accepted scholarship.
For instance, Allen Walker Read's widely accepted etymology
of O.K. is just the reverse of Hendrickson's--the
O.K. of oll korrect was adopted by Van
Buren (“Old Kinderhook”) as a campaign cry, not the
other way round. At horse latitudes , the author has
picked up the theory that it comes from “ golfo de las
yeguas , `gulf of the mares,' which was the Spanish
name for the ocean between Spain and the Canary
Islands and compares the supposed fickleness of mares
with the fickle winds in these latitudes.” As far as I
have been able to determine, golfo de las yeguas is a
complete fiction, for there is no evidence for any such
designation in any gazetteer that I could find nor at
the Royal Geographical Society. Besides, the horse latitudes
referred to were in the doldrums, which occur
west, not east of the Canaries. I comment on that in
Ball of Wax .
My current theory runs as follows: the Sargasso
Sea, a region northeast of the West Indies, is characterized
as an area of relative calm and an abundance
of sargassum , an entangling seaweed. As such seaweeds
thrive in the Gulf Stream, they are generally called
gulfweeds . In all likelihood, the region was originally
known as golfo del mar in Spanish, that is, `gulf of the
sea,' and was so entered on charts. English speakers
who used the charts read mar as mare `female horse,'
which was later generalized to horse . Another possibility
is that the origin was French golfe de la mer or
latitude de la mer , French mer being quite close in
sound to English mare , which was later generalized to
horse . A third possibility is that the waters were populated
by manatees, which might have been likened to
horses, not too farfetched a suggestion when one considers
that sailors are said to have imagined them to be
mermaids. The theory that the horse latitudes were so
named because mariners becalmed there threw overboard
the horses they were transporting because they
died of thirst or starved seems almost impossible: in
order for such an event to have given rise to horse
latitudes it would have to have recurred many times,
and it is hard to believe that 16th- and 17th-century
mariners were so improvident as to have allowed that
to happen very often. Thus, I cannot accept Hendrickson's
origin for horse latitudes , though, to give him his
due, he only copied the etymology from other sources,
the OED included.
A baker's dozen of other matters:
1. At Hore-Belisha , the information is given that
the pedestrian crosswalk signals are “often called Hore-Belishas ”;
in my experience, the term is usually Belisha
beacon .
2. At heliotrope , some might miss the point without
the information that Apollo was the Greek god of
the sun.
3. At guerilla : the usual spelling is guerrilla . (It
comes from Spanish guerra `war.')
4. Perhaps the mystery of the origin of the verb
goose might be cleared up by examining the opening
chapter of Gargantua , by Rabelais.
5. Under gibson cocktail , it is not made with a
“pearl onion” [Ugh!] but with a pickled pearl onion.
6. I have serious doubts about the purported origin
of flea market and its dating to Dutch colonial
days.
7. The change from numble pie to umble pie to
humble pie , attributed to “some anonymous punster in
the time of William the Conqueror,” was actually due
to the same influences that changed a napron to an
apron in the first instance and to the characteristic
weakening of the initial h in English, heard today in
an historical, an hilarious , etc.
8. Coffin nail is a later allusion to `cigarette': in
its earlier metaphoric life it referred to anything that
might serve to drive one to an early grave; indeed,
some early Western saloons sold tokens bearing the
words “coffin nail” stamped on them which were good
for a shot of redeye.
9. Humongous is given as “a term for a huge,
monstrous person”: it merely means `huge, monstrous'
and, as far as I know, has nothing to do with wrestlers
or, necessarily, people.
10. At hung higher than Gilderoy's kite the author
glosses kite as `body'; it is actually a word for `belly.'
11. There is a theory that the curious expression
(from the Bible), It is harder for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle results from a misreading of the original:
the original, it is said, has a word meaning `rope,'
not `camel,' which makes sense (to me). I cannot insist
that Hendrickson accept the theory, but he ought at
least to have acknowledged its existence; instead, we are
told that ancient Middle Eastern walled towns had a
rear gate called the Needle's Eye through which a camel
could pass only if kneeling down. How camels move
forward while kneeling is not explained--perhaps, pace
Seattle--that is (also) the true origin of skid row .
12. Comments like “The cuckoo was so named for
the one-note song it repeats over and over” came from
someone who has never heard the bird's disyllabic call.
13. At Eggs Benedict we learn that Oscar of the
Waldorf concocted the modern dish on the inspiration
of a Samuel Benedict who ordered something similar
as a hangover cure. Oscar is credited with having introduced
the use of English muffins to the recipe in
1894, which I find somewhat anachronistic as they
(being neither English nor muffins) did not exist before
the mid 1920s.
A glance at the “Most Frequently Cited Authorities”
reveals the possible source(s) of some of these
aberrations: Partridge's Origins and Shipley's Dictionary
of Word Origins are two of the most notorious
sources of misinformation on etymology. Moreover,
Slang and Its Analogues is attributed to John S.
Farmer and W. E. “Hurley,” the latter's name being,
properly, Henley. It would appear, then, that Hendrickson
has combined his sources for any information
he could glean, repeating indiscriminately his choices
of that which is most colorful. If you have occasion to
refer to this work, it would be well to keep in mind
that it can be relied on for picturesque etymologies but
not, necessarily, accurate ones.
Laurence Urdang
Kangaroo's Comments & Wallaby's Words
This useful book is divided into three main parts:
pages 21 to 130 consist of eight chapters of text dealing
with various aspects of (Australian) life and flora and
fauna; there follow two glossaries-cum-index, one in
which Australianisms are translated into American
English, the other listing American words and expressions
with their Australian equivalents; both give references
to the chapters in which they are treated. The
difficulty with the reference system is that one cannot
tell where to find Chapter 4, say, till he leafs through
to the end of 3 or the beginning of 5. It would have
helped to have given the chapter numbers in running
heads at the book's foredge.
Another objection is that the terms identified as
Australian are not, necessarily, exclusively so. For example,
serviette, scone, sheila, sister, Smarties, spanner,
spot on, squash, starkers , just to pick a handful, are
Briticisms; although the author makes that clear, it
seems odd that the words and expressions that are direct
borrowings from British English are not individually
identified as such. That, however, is not the purpose of
the book, so it might seem carping of me to bring it up.
Also, as the author acknowledges, “This is not meant to
be a definitive lexicon of Australian-English,” a true
enough statement even without the extraneous hyphen.
Although the text makes clear the nature of things
like sausage rolls (“ minced (ground up) sausage meat
wrapped in pastry, fried, then kept warm for takeaway”),
the Glossary identifies them as “takeout
snack,” which would mislead the casual reader (of the
Glossary) to infer that all takeout snacks are called
sausage rolls .
These criticisms having been made, Kangaroo's
Comments is nonetheless an interesting, rather well-done
guide to the Australianisms it covers, and travelers
down under would be well advised to use it. It
might also prove useful to those who cannot understand
Paul Hogan's films (or commercials).
Laurence Urdang
Verbal Analogies I--Miscellaneous
Remember proportions? “Ten is to five as twenty is
to ten; 10/5 = 20/10; 10:5:: 20:10, etc.?” Complete the analogies
in the sets given below by selecting the appropriate
term or description from among the Answers
provided. The Solution appears on page 32.
1. birds: ornithology:: voting/election trends:?
2. crown for king: metonymy:: blade for sword:?
3. chance: aleatory:: charity:?
4. Oxford: Oxonian:: Jerusalem:?
5. poison: toxiphobia:: train travel:?
6. run: walk:: cursorial:?
7. human speech: formal public worship:: linguistics:?
8. lying under oath: perjury:: influencing a jury:?
9. dreams: beard:: oneiro-:?
10. across: trans-:: friction:?
11. open spaces: childbirth:: agoraphobia:?
12. sea: tide:: lake:?
Answers:
a) Eleemosynary. g) Psephology.
b) Embracery. h) Seiche.
c) Gressorial. i) Siderodromophobia.
d) Hierosolymitan. j) Synecdoche.
e) Liturgics. k) Tocophobia.
f) Pogono-. l) Tribo-.
“Iranian Mutes Calls for Revenge Against U.S.” [Headline
in The New York Times , . Submitted by
.]
“Murphy wanted the Eagle's Nest to resemble Birches
Garden--the high-altitude restaurant in Austria where Adolf
Hitler hid at the end of World War II.” [From the York
(Pennsylvania) Daily Record , . Submitted
by .]
“The truck now has over 191,000 miles on it and has
never had a major problem until recently. The timing gear
broke in the front yard after coming home from the orthodontist.”
[From the Letters column, Friends , .
Submitted by .]
“One thousand marijuana plants have been seized in a
joint police investigation near here Monday.” [From the
Kitchener-Waterloo (Canada) Record , . Submitted
by .]
“Thank you, dead Ricardo....” [A caption in the program
of the Eighth Annual Mardi Gras Bal Magnifique of
Greater Los Angeles, . Submitted by .]
Note: Clue (x) should have read “gallium” (for “gadolinium”).
Sorry.
“It's Detroit sometime in the recent future, a city beleaguered
by the sleaziest of criminals and defended by a police
department that's the subsidiary of a big corporation.” [From
a movie listing for Robocop in TV Guide , Western Washington
State edition, . Submitted by
.]
“In Cleveland, pollution along the Cuyahoga River was
so bad 20 years ago that the river caught fire. Now pleasure
boats from nearby marinas must dodge freighters on their
way to nightclubs and restaurants along the banks of the
cleaned-up river.” [From the Chicago Tribune , .
Submitted by .]
