The Lamps of Speech
Proverbs are the lamps of speech, boasts an Arab
saying. The words of night are coated in butter:
laments another, as soon as day shines upon them
they melt away .
Contradictory as life itself, sometimes pointing
out a general truth, as often undermining it, Arab
proverbs have been gathered and annotated since
the ninth century AD. The small Arabic library
where I work contains a shelf-full, the volumes numbered
one to twelve. Whittling these down to a single
article recalls the saying He tried to carry two
watermelons in one hand, which in turn recalls the
man who tried to tile the sea . Instead, I shall attempt
here only a selection of a selection, suggesting some
themes and functions along the way. After all,
Grapes are eaten one by one and Hair upon hair
makes a beard .
Proverbs may be considered as a rough guide to
local customs, traditions in a nutshell. To understand
a people, acquaint yourself with their proverbs , or as
another proverb puts it, Customs are the fifth element
of the world . Of these customs, hospitality and
generosity among the Arabs have pride of place.
The generous heart does not grow old; The house that
receives no guests receives no angels; A rich man who
is ungenerous is like a tree without fruit ; or, more
succinctly, Food for one is food for two; One cup of
coffee, forty years' friendship .
Yet if hospitality is celebrated, its pitfalls are
also charted. He ate the camel and all it carried ,
pithily describes the over-eager guest. Guests and
fish after three days start to stink , or even An unwelcome
guest lingers like the British Empire . To avoid
such asides, remember to Speak straight and sit
crooked; or again, After the passing of incense there
is no sitting , the message here echoed by a telling
rhyme lost in translation. [ ba\?\ad al a\?\uuD la
taq\?\uuD ]. Do not let it be whispered of you, You
smile at him, and he brings his donkey . Which goes
to show that for every proverb for proclaiming in
public, there are a couple more for muttering in
private.
Another subject high on the proverbial agenda
is the family. My brother and I against my cousin; my
cousin and I against the stranger is a frequently
translated example. Families, as the proverb suggests,
should be closely knit. They should also, according
to most proverbs, be large: There is no light
in the house without children; Nobody knows when a
man without daughters dies . Or concerning the elderly,
A house without an elderly person is as a garden
without a well . Motherhood is also highly
praised: When a man's mother is at home, his loaf of
bread is warm; The mother of a mute understands
what he says .
So far so good. Aimed in the opposite direction,
we have, Sell your mother and buy a rifle , or the
even less wholesome, Relatives are scorpions ,
[ aqaarib \?\aqaarib ] rhyme twisting the arm of truth.
Similarly, countering the commendable If you don't
have an old person in the house, buy one , we have the
less generous In time of famine the old have teeth and
What the devil accomplished in a year, an old woman
may accomplish in an hour. Children are the stairway
to Paradise is challenged by The child of one day
had already learned how to annoy its parents , while
undercutting the standard injunctions to marry we
have A man with two wives becomes a porter . The
existence of many opposites suggests that proverbs
perhaps once came in pairs, to be swopped in a sort
of verbal wrestling, one vying with another or sometimes
combining with it, the idealistic and the skeptical
in balance: The man without children has a hole
in his heart; the man with children has a heart like a
sieve; Your family may chew you, but they will not
swallow you .
Proverbs can be equally ambivalent when it
comes to friendship. Straightforward enough is The
neighbour before the house, the companion before the
road [ al-jaar qabl ad-daar, ar-rafiiq qabl aT-Tariiq ],
friendship and rhyme going hand in hand as in He
who loves you will chew pebbles for you, your enemy
will count your faults [Habiibutak yamDugh lak azzalaT
wa \?\aduuka ya\?\ud al-ghalaT ]. A proverbial second
opinion, however, is found in Don't pray for
your friend's good fortune, lest you lose him . Or
again, See two people in harmony, and one person is
bearing the burden , or the still more skeptical Beware
of your enemy twice, beware of your friend a
hundred times .
Yet the most Machiavellian proverbs pertain to
government, Acton's view of power echoed with a
vengeance: Always stroke the head you want to cut
off warns one medieval example. The victim is murdered,
the funeral is attended , confides another, the
grisly humor continuing in The sound of footsteps
does not disturb the severed head . Advice on the policy
of divide and rule is contained in When the cat
and mouse make peace, the grocer's store is lost . Advice
on not underestimating the opposition is seen in
He who makes light of other men will be killed by a
turnip . On the need for firm government: One rug
can accommodate twelve dervishes, but no kingdom
can accommodate two kings . The pitfalls of negotiation
are described in He who gets between the onion
and its skin will be rewarded by its stink, while an
observation on rhetoric, as true of the House of
Commons as of the Abbasid court, goes, Everything
is cut short except a long speech. For use by ministers
of finance there is If meat is dear, patience is cheap.
For those in the middle echelons of government
comes a whole portfolio of sayings on the perils of
ambition. Climb like a cucumber, fall like an aubergine;
Stretch your feet only as far as your blanket allows;
No tree has reached the sky; The foot that is too
swift must be cut off; He who eats the Sultan's raisins
must give him dates, or, put another way, A man
without cunning is like an empty matchbox.
The great mass of proverbs, though, are for the
lips of the governed, those proverbial underdogs. A
streetwise realism prevails, if not downright subversion:
One lie in the Sultan's head impedes a dozen
truths; There's no security in three things: the sea, the
Sultan, and time. Expectations are generally low in
accordance with When you make your bed on the
floor you don't fall out. When speaking out is perilous——
Who should tell the lion that he has bad
breath?; Complain to the bow and it will send an arrow——other
means are required: When you have a
favor to ask of the dog, call him Sir, or, summing
up the nature of hierarchies down the ages, The
prince's dog is also a prince. Deference is not the
only means: Money delivers the djinni bound, assures
one; two others snigger that A bribe (a) takes down
the judge's trousers, (b) unwinds his turban. If economy
with the truth is one proverbial option——Never
tell the truth unless you have one foot in the stirrup——
as a general policy that is not without dangers also:
The rope of untruth is short.
Safeguarded by their anonymity, proverbs have
a way of reaching awkward home truths shunned by
other texts. Leave the moral high ground to poets,
sultans, and the powers that be: Keep away from
trouble and sing to it, suggests one saying; but most
warn that trouble will come anyway. In the timeless
land of proverbs Murphy's——or, if you will, Abdullah's——Law
rules: Start selling turbans and people
will be born without heads; If a peasant were made of
silver, his balls would be made of brass. In the same
vein, I went to Damascus to rid myself of worries;
Damascus was full of worries, or, in a phrase, One
grape, a hundred wasps. The Almighty might provide
the dervish with a kitchen, but conversely He
sends almonds to those without teeth.
All this might be depressing, until we remember
how proverbs also have an inbuilt skepticism about
themselves. Better a neat lie than a sloppy truth hints
how rhyme, that proverbial standby, can get the better
of reality. Proverbial truth is nothing if not
many-sided, experience winning out over language
for its own sake. The tongue of experience is truest,
confirms one with due humility: Ask a man of experience
and not a physician. Throughout the individual
is given his due, experience seen as a sort of leveler:
There is no tree the wind has not shaken; He whose
hands are in water is not like him whose hands are in
fire; or, taken a stage further, An imbecile can manage
his own affairs better than a wise man the affairs
of other people.
Perhaps it is in the light of this that we should
understand the saying, Seek advice from a thousand
men, ignore the advice of a thousand more, then return
to your original decision. The limitations of languages
are again brought home in A thousand curses
do not tear a tobe [a shapeless, shirtlike garment];
or, most majestically of all, in The dogs bark, the
caravan passes. Behind the telling proverb is a salutary
regard for something infinitely more powerful.
If I have regretted keeping quite once, I have regretted
my speech many times over, another proverb admonishes
in my left ear, while at my right there
whispers in Arabic and then in English: idhaa kaana
al-kalaam min fiDDah fa as-sukuut min dhahab: If
speech is silver, silence is golden.
Wandering around the transformed city of Bergen,
Norway in search of old haunts, I felt like Gulliver waking
from a long sleep. [From Going Home to/Retour à
Bergen, by Helga Loverseed, in Empress (C.P. Airlines
magazine), :52. Submitted by .]
Cemetery buries crime victim every 2 days. [Headline
from San Bernardino Sun , . Submitted by
., who observes, You can't keep a good man down.]
Stress
To paraphrase the German proverb: it's the
stress that makes the meaning. Hyperbole,
perhaps, but consider the following:
1) a big red house
2) a big red house
3) a big red house
4) a big red house
5) a big red house
In the third and fourth phrases, a comparison with
other kinds of house is implied and, in the last, with
other kinds of building. Each version conveys a
slightly different and easily distinguishable meaning.
In like manner, a French teacher is one who
teaches French; a French teacher is a citizen of
France who teaches something; a grave -digger is
a cemetery employee; a grave digger is a solemn
archaelogist or perhaps a single-minded dog with a
bone; and a head shrinker is not a head -shrinker
but a chief launderer of woolens.
Sometimes a change of stress does not alter the
meaning. British speakers or, at least, those heard
on BBC often emphasize certain phrases differently
from their American cousins. Thus, to BBC announcers,
President Clinton's residence is the
White House , while, to Americans, it is the White
House; and I once heard a BBC announcer say
Prometheus Bound when an American would have
said Prometheus Bound . As far as I can discover,
hono (u) r-bound and north-bound are stressed in the
same way on both sides of the Atlantic, that is, by
both groups of English -speakers ( not the same as
English speakers ).
Recently, in Maine, a television advertisement
for a large paper company ended thus: “X Company:
Caring about the state we're in .” Normally, the primary
stress would fall on caring with a secondary
stress on state . By stressing state, with a secondary
stress on in, the advertisement gave—or tried to
give—the impression that X Company, however it
may be viewed by environmentalists, really cares
about the State and the state of Maine.
Another, nationally aired series of advertisements
relied on some wordplay achieved by wrongly
stressing the first word of the name of a breakfast
food whose pseudo-colloquial garble I will not dignify
by quoting. Ordinarily, in the phrase nut and honey ,
both nouns would bear equal emphasis. In the advertisement,
the first was stressed, yielding, Nothing,
honey. Ah, well. A kind of rapture of the deep
seizes writers of advertisements when they try to
plumb the public's tolerance of inanity.
The confusion caused by such differently or
wrongly placed emphasis in a phrase is likely to be
short-lived and on a level with unfamiliar prounciations
such as congratul at ory, con jure , con temp late,
disci plin ary, la bor at'ry, and vag ar y. Nor is communication
really disrupted even by those new, semiliterate
Americanisms: communic ant , consult ant , defend ant;
counsel or, elect or (al), jur or , where the
schwa (as a in above, e in her ) has been replaced by
broad (- ant ) or rounded (- or ) vowel sounds. Other,
often dialectal aberrations such as in surance and in flu ence
are also readily understandable. The same,
however, cannot be said either of the recent and increasingly
common af flu ence, barely, if at all, distinguishable
from the similarly mis-stressed ef flu ents,
or of defuse , when a failure to place nearly equal
emphasis on both syllables leads to the word's being
mistaken for the verb diffuse .
In recent years, according to The Oxford Companion
to the English Language , The BBC Pronunciation
Unit has made some changes in its recommendations
to broadcasters, who are now being
advised, among other things, to stress the first instead
of the second syllable of controversy ; the second
syllable of dispute as both verb and noun; and
the first syllable of cervical , instead of the second
(with - i - as in nine ). Presumably, urinal (- i - as in
nine ) is now also stressed on the first syllable. I suspect
that the new policy, rather than being a reflection
of changes in the speech of literate Britons, is a
nod—or perhaps a resigned shrug—in the direction
of overseas English speakers, since the new pronunciations
conform with those of at least some overseas
speakers, among them, Americans.
Yet, with the exceptions of af flu ence, defuse,
and, for Americans, the now-disapproved cervical,
these examples of difference in stress can be said to
be no more than small blips in the smooth flow of
ideas. Far more confusion is being caused by the
insidious loss of second-syllable stress in words that
are both verbs and nouns. Of course, there are
words that are pronounced and stressed exactly alike
in both syntactical uses: accord, control, decree, dismay,
et al.; but these words appear to be in the minority.
More numerous are those transformed by
first-syllable stress from verbs to nouns or, less commonly,
to adjectives. Examples are:
abstract consort impress purpose
address contest object record
compact contract pervert subject
compress frequent purport suspect
Sometimes, even these verbs may be stressed on the
first syllable by way of contrasting two actions or
conditions, as in, it has de creased, not in creased.
While such distinctions have no effect on our
understanding of the written word which has punctuation
to help it, in speech they are useful pointers
to syntax and meaning—or could be, if only speakers
would make phrases like the following distinguishable:
agency's combat agencies combat
chemist's compound chemists compound
driver's permit drivers permit
pollster's survey pollsters survey
Even when one is not given to viewing every
change in language with fear and loathing, it does
seem that any loss of clarity—especially on the part
of politicians and of those who are the principal purveyors
of information—ought to cause some alarm.
It may be symptomatic of such losses that today the
adverb of choice is clearly, used even more often
than the hucksters' Free! , and, since clarity of expression
and thought is seldom evident, this frequent
repetition of clearly can be seen as a kind of
mantra, a prayer that begs our indulgence, asks us to
take the wish for the deed, and, what is far worse,
seeks to convict us of ignorance and stupidity should
we look elsewhere for enlightenment.
Slang from Greyfriars
Eighty years before the “Dead Poets' Society”
was filmed, another master was shaping the vocabulary
of schoolboys. This was the unique Charles
Hamilton, alias Frank Richards, Martin Clifford,
Owen Conquest, Winston Cardew, and many other
pen-names. Truly he has been called the world writing
champion but now is most remembered for his
creation of Billy Bunter, the Fat Owl of the Remove.
Turn through the pages of his comics, “The
Magnet” and “The Gem,” and the dated charm of
their schoolboy slang lives again. Copies even found
their way into the trenches of the First World War,
so Frank Richards (his favorite name) stamped generations
of boys from 1908 to 1940 and even later
when the tales were turned into books, up until the
last Bunter Story appeared in 1960, shortly before
Richards' death.
Although his school tales were spun around
public schools many of his young readers went to
State schools but still read his matchless prose with
delight. 200,000 copies of “The Magnet” were sold
weekly throughout the British Isles. Even George
Orwell was moved to comment on the phenomenon:
The year is 1910 or 1940 but it is all the same.
You are at Greyfriars. There is a cosy fire in the
study. The king is on the throne and the pound is
worth a pound. Over in Europe the comic foreigners
are jabbering and gesticulating. Lord
Mauleverer has just got another fiver and we are
all settling down to a tremendous tea of sausages,
sardines, crumpets, potted meat, jam and doughnuts.
Everything is safe, solid and unquestionable.
Everything will be the same for ever and
ever.
F.R. captures the youthful slang of that innocent
era when life consisted of countless exclamation
marks. Bunter is much given to apprehension— Oh
crikey!, Oh jiminy!, Oh lor'! or when an even worse
fate is expected, Yarooh! Harry Wharton's favorite
Great pip! influenced many young readers, while Oh
crumbs!, or What the thump ?, or Oh my hat! were all
typical expression in the '20s and appear in P.G.
Wodehouse novels also, as both influential writers
had a vivacious approach to slang. Key words of that
era are cheery, chums, and breezy, all much used by
Frank Richards. His own favorite expression was
“All is calm and bright.”
Few writers of school tales were as erudite as
this shy scholar, who once wrote a Bunter tale in
Latin, which was printed in an issue of The Times
Educational Supplement in 1960. The richness and
variety of his own vocabulary was a good influence
on that army of young readers. Mr. Quelch, form
master of the Remove, was a beast, but a just beast, a
phrase echoed by many schoolboys of that era. He
was as sharp a Latin scholar as F.R. himself and
clearly had an effect on the vocabulary of his foolish
and absurd pupils, especially in the insults they exchanged
with each other, copied by their readers.
You spoofing sweep! You frabjous ass! You fat duffer!
Mr. Quelch would describe the chubby Bunter
as have an extensive circumference , and more verbal
riches were supplied by Hurree Jamset Ram Singh,
the young Nabob of Bhanipur, who acts like a cheerful
Greek chorus. Is it a go? asked Bunter. The go
fulness is not terrific chuckled the young Nabob. The
goodfulness of the riddance is great but the cheekfulness
of the idiotic Bunter is preposterous! This amusing
mix of fractured English and an excellent vocabulary
was enjoyed and copied by young readers who
relished the ridiculous.
The pages of F.R.'s schoolboy stories were peppered
with Cave! and Ware breaks! The jolly old
bean's got his jolly old back up , so one sees how
smoothly these stories prepared the readers for the
transition to Wodehouse and encapsulated the idea
of the laid-back Englishman in the idiom of that
time. Ripping, whopper `lie,' nunky for `uncle,' take
a pew `seat,' on their jiggers `bicycles,' playing the
goat, a measly solicitor, cad, and rotter, and similar
expressions were all part of typical schoolboy slang
before World War II, and F.R.'s tales are brimming
with them.
As one fan, now elderly, recalled, “Errand boys
were able to enter through the `Gem' and `Magnet'
into a new world where the talk was of fivers and
tenners, motorbikes and gold watches —things they
had never encountered at that time,” so their horizons
as well as their vocabularies were extended.
Bunter's long-awaited postal order was a joke
every boy understood, but Frank Richards was
clever enough to adapt his use of schoolboy slang to
the changed times. Before World War II he would
write that Bunter couldn't care a straw, but in his
later novels he changed this to couldn't care less, so
his ear for dialogue stayed tuned into very old age.
The code of schoolboy honour remained steadfast,
as did the erudite smattering of French and
Latin phrases and quotations from the Bible and
Shakespeare that made Frank Richard's school tales
educational as well as entertaining. The recent resurgence
of interest in his stories in modern reprints
and broadcasts shows that this archaic schoolboy
slang is still perfectly recognizable and acceptable to
a new generation as we near the 21st century. That
gap between the charismatic master of the “Dead
Poets' Society” and the prolific Frank Richards is
narrower than one might think.
Some English Loanwords in Thai
The strangest example of a loanword I have encountered
in Thai is half-English, half-Italian
musically derived: dedsmollay. At first I took it to be
French because of its sound, but actually it comes
from the Dean Martin song That's Amore, which enjoyed
enormous popularity here. If you recall,
“When the moon hits your eye like a great pizza
pie/That's amore.” Thais chose to hear dead for that
and corrupted 's amore to smollay; thus dedsmollay
has been a common slang word for `dead' for thirty
years or so!
Thailand is the only southeast Asian nation to
have avoided colonization by a western power, so
there are significantly fewer English loanwords in
Thai than there are French in Lao, Vietnamese, and
Khmer, English in Malay and Burmese, and Dutch in
Indonesia's various languages. That is not to say that
Thai has been slow or reluctant to adopt or assimilate
words from other languages, but they are mostly
Sanskrit/Pali, Khmer, and Chinese. The first English
loanwords date from perhaps 100 years ago, exhibiting
steady growth since then with a truly spectacular
spurt over the past twenty years, predictably in the
fields of science, business and economics, politics,
fashion, pop culture, and so on.
Here are a few of the more interesting ones I
have come across. As in all languages, the older a
loanword, the less recognizable it is, so I start with
some of these and then move on.
bam a pump.
bok the game of poker.
engerhon non-imbibed alcohol.
godang warehouse. [from godown]
gok tap/faucet. [from stopcock]
heema snow. [from the Himalayas? Thailand
never experiences snow; indeed, it is such an
alien concept that, if shown a postcard of a snow-covered
landscape, working-class Thais say it
looks delicious rather than beautiful. Strictly
speaking it is not an English loanword.]
(rote) may city bus. [rote means `land conveyance'
and may comes from mail. The first van-
(and I suppose vaguely bus-) like vehicles common
in Bangkok were used for mail delivery.
Also rote tua `tour bus,' rote air `air con bus,'
and rote cote `coach']
reet wreath.
satoh to store.
dan ton.
goolud gross.
lah yard. Now used only for cloth.
lim ream.
loh dozen.
aksairt abscess.
bar beer outdoor beer bar. No prizes for guessing
that adjectives follow nouns in Thai!
bartendee female bartender. [Dee is from lady]
(riak) bip bip to page someone. Riak means
`to call.'
cheque spring bounced cheque.
choke up shock absorbers.
dy blow-dry.
Erawit Elvis.
giff shop novelty items such as plastic vomit,
whoopee cushions. [from gift shop]
(reua) loh rowing boat. Also reua yort [from
yacht] used in the sense of `luxury cruiser.' A
sailboat in Thai literally and rather charmingly
translates as `a boat with a leaf.'
lingmote remote control device.
Robin Hood illegal immigrant worker.
(khon) serb waiter or waitress. [Khon means
`person' and serb, is from serve.]
(nak) sing lunatic drivers in flash motors. [Nak
means `person' and sing comes from racing]
sow bow walkman. [from sound bound. I have
not been able to unearth who coined this or if it
is exclusive to Thai.]
(jai) sport to be a good sport. [Jai means `heart.'
Numerous Thai expressions use jai, e.g., khaojai,
`to understand,' literally `to enter the heart.']
tomsin tonsils.
v.d.o. phonetic rendition of video. Often
spelled in Latin rather than Thai characters.
fen boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, minor
wife, lover. [from fan `enthusiast']
toot any male homosexual. [from the film Tootsie
in which Dustin Hoffman dressed up as a
woman. This is odd because transvestites are
openly accepted in Thai society, and male homosexuals
are not considered—as they are by some
Japanese housewives I have met—as wanting to
cross dress.]
gay king dominant partner in a male homosexual
relationship.
gay queen partner who assumes the feminine
role in a male homosexual relationship.
lb lesbian. Also ledbian and bian.
dee partner who assumes the female role and
appearance in a lesbian relationship. [from lady]
torm partner who assumes the masculine role
and appearance in a lesbian relationship. [from
tomboy.] Also used in the English sense of a girl
who climbs trees, picks scabs, disdains frocks,
though less so nowadays.
sexy bom sex symbol. Probably an elided mix
up of sexy, sex bomb, and sex symbol (/sek/sy/m/
bon/) because l is not a final consonant in Thai
and if encountered in a loanword becomes n (or
in this case m as bomb is also a loanword).
Thus, the present writer is addressed in Thai as
Mr Porn!
I should like to end with a mystery—nothing to
do with loanwords at all but fascinating nonetheless.
The Thai name for the Beatles is Sii Tao Tong `the
Four Golden Turtles.' So far I have been unable to
find out why but I live in hope.
Politically Correct Linguistic Paranoia
On Sunday, 11 July 1993, John McLaughlin, in
signing off his television program, The McLaughlin
Group, apologized for having used the word welsh in
the sense, “cheat by failing to pay a gambling debt;
go back on one's word” [ RHD Unabridged ] in an
earlier program. Presumably, the Welsh lobby had
gone after him in the mistaken assumption that the
word derives from the word Welsh `of, pertaining to,
or characteristic of the people of Wales.' The RHD
precedes that etymology with “perh.,” meaning, obviously
that there is some possibility of that derivation;
the OED etymology is “Origin unknown.” Examination
of the scores of senses listed in the OED
for Welsh, n. , reveals that virtually all are either entirely
neutral or complimentary; the two possible exceptions
are welshcomb `comb one's hair by using
one's thumb and fingers instead of a comb' and
Welsh cricket `louse.' Of the latter type many examples
could be listed on the order of Irish pennant
`untidy loose end of a rope.' The RHD labels the
term “( sometimes offensive ),” which does not mean
that it is offensive occasionally but that it is offensive
to some people (presumably Irish). Have the French
raised an international brouhaha at the UN about the
French disease? Have the British applied to the International
Court of Justice about the English disease?
Have adherents to Judaism worldwide taken
offense at Jew's harp? Hardly, though Oxford University
Press went through a bad patch some years
ago because of the subentry Jew down `bargain
down in price,' notwithstanding its notation marking
the use as offensive.
In America they tell Polish jokes; the same jokes
are told in England about the Irish; very likely, they
crop up amongst the Serbs about the Croats, amongst
the Croats about the Serbs, and amongst the Muslims
about the Serbs and the Croats. Recently, the head of
the California Bar Association delivered an address at
the annual meeting decrying jokes about lawyers,
suggesting that a man who had raided a law office and
killed some people in it had been inspired or spurred
on by the derisive attitude toward lawyers that “lawyer
jokes” fostered. Oddly, it was in the same McLaughlin
program referred to above that this issue
was raised and promptly ridiculed as ludicrous: one
can assume only that McLaughlin felt more pressured
by nationalistic and ethnic interests than by lawyers.
VERBATIM ran an article, “Politically Correct
Nomenclature, or, How to Win at Trivial Pursuit and
Lose Friends” [XVIII, 4], by Marc A. Schindler, that
delved into the subject, particularly with regard to
the use of Inuit for Eskimo, though I note that the
trade name, Eskimo Pie, has not been changed to
Inuit Pie; also, it seems unlikely that the French ice
cream confection, Esquimau Gervais, has been
hailed into court. When I was a lad, the word nigger
was taboo in the US, but it was used freely till recently
in Britain (meaning `any dark-skinned person'):
the word Negro (with a capital N ) was carefully
used instead. Then, at about the same time when
colored was anathematized (despite the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People,
which has still not changed its name), black was legislated
by that community of speakers to supplant
Negro and colored, though I cannot recall any riders
requiring a capital B . ( Cape Colored —or, more
properly, Coloured —is retained in South Africa
with a specific denotation of a “person of mixed European
and African or Malayan ancestry” [ RHD Unabridged ],
in which one must read White for “European”
and dark-skinned for “African or Malayan.”)
There cropped up, here and there, objections to the
use of black to describe things other than good and
pure, and Black is beautiful became the catchword
of the day. Is it my imagination or do I detect intimations
that black is on its way out? In a perfect
world, there would be no need to refer to people by
their skin color: many years ago newspapers agreed
to omit mention of an individual's color, but they got
round that by showing a photograph; today, television
newscasters avoid irrelevant mention of skin
color, but they seem almost relieved to be able to
show a picture of someone being arrested and of
looters and rioters.
Gone is the time when one might make a reasonably
accurate guess at a person's race or nationality
by his name; today, when blacks who do not adopt
Arabic names or names like Franklin D. Roosevelt
Jones might be named Kelly or Murphy, Jews born as
Greenberg change their name to Monteverdi or Vermont,
Hirsch to Cerf, and so forth, and people with
Slavic and Italian names either change its spelling in
an attempt to get people to pronounce it as closely as
possible to the original (e.g., Kovalsky instead of Kowalski )
or keep the spelling and change the pronunciation
because they get tired of telling people that Modigliani
is properly pronounced [\?\môdē\?\lyänē] (or,
Anglice, [\?\môdē\?\lyänē]) and not “muh\?\diglee\?\ahnee,”
that Castagno is easily pronounced [kästänyô], or that
the Polish name Zajac is pronounced [\?\zäyäntz]
rather than “Say, Jack”: after all, there might still be
some old-timers who remember the film actress Signe
Hasso as well as words like sign, assign, consign, condign,
malign, deign, feign, reign, etc., hence know
that in a medial - gn -, the - g - is not always articulated.
I number such items among the Perils of Literacy: it
is mainly since they learned to read that people have
begun to change the standard pronunciations of
words and names according to their spellings, a dangerous
bit of mischief for a language like English.
Any restrictive tampering with language in
America immediately prompts a knee-jerk reaction
invoking the First Amendment, which it would not
be inappropriate to quote here:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of people
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government
for a redress of grievances.
Is it only in America that special interest groups
have learned to lobby for preferential treatment and
attempt to legislate the language? The recent
change in Miami by which Spanish is allowed alongside
English as an official language is seen by some as
a Balkanization of the cherished “melting pot”; but
those holding that view who support it with the
claim that the 20th-century immigrants have assimilated
culturally and speak English are wrong: many
speak little or no English, and most make every effort
they can to retain the cultures of their respective
native lands, including religious observances.
One might be led to think that it is always open
(silly) season on the language in the US; but we cannot
ignore the seriousness of religious taboos on
some aspects of language and writing, as the fatwah
issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini on Salman
Rushdie because of a book. In a macabre way, one
might take heart from the news that books could still
be perceived to have such an impact; my own cynical
view is that had it not been for the attention
drawn to it by the fatwah, Satanic Verses would not
have had much effect and would have been long forgotten
by now. In other countries, people kill each
other over language.
There are a lot of offensive words in the language,
but far worse are the offensive ways in which
people put those words together to express offensive
ideas.
“Schindler's List” of Ashkenaz's Names
Back in the mid-80s, when Keneally's book
Schindler's List first came out, an eerie experience
happened to me. I was intrigued by the book;
over and above the coincidence of names, to be
sure, but having the same, relatively rare name as
the book's protagonist led to a forceful lesson in the
power of Name.
I happened to buy the book at a bookstore in
New York's Laguardia Airport. I paid for it with a
credit card, and when the clerk saw my name on the
credit card, her eyes widened. “Mr. Schindler,
please—let me shake your hand!” I was very embarrassed
and could feel my face flush. I protested
that I was no relation to Oskar Schindler, but this
did not seem to make any difference to her. “I'm
Jewish,” she explained, “and it's enough for me to
touch the name.”
Ironically, given Oskar Schindler's role in saving
the lives of Jews in Poland and Czechoslovakia, the
name is not exclusively a gentile German name.
Some months ago, the chief rabbi of conservative
Judaism in the U.S. wrote a letter to the editor of
The Wall Street Journal commenting on a review of
the Spielberg movie—the rabbi's name is also
Schindler (again, no relation!). On several occasions,
while applying for visas to a certain Middle Eastern
country, I have been asked to provide a baptismal
certificate, presumably to determine whether I was
Jewish or Christian, which happens to play an unofficial
role in the entry practices of that particular
country. About a decade ago a European airplane
was hijacked by Middle Eastern terrorists, who tried
to identify Jews among the passengers by the names
in their passports, on the theory that those ending in
- stein or - berg were clearly Jewish. A German-speaking
stewardess, drafted into an interpretive
role by the terrorists, played a heroic role by insisting
that all of the Germanic-sounding names were
really “pure” German, not Jewish.
Is there in fact such a thing as a Jewish name?
More specifically, are there unique or typical names
borne by Ashkenazi Jews from central Europe?
Aside from nobility, most inhabitants of German-speaking
central Europe started taking family names
in the Middle Ages. As in Britain, these names fell
into various categories (the following is not meant to
be exhaustive, just illustrative):
occupations: English - Weaver, Cartwright, Smith,
etc. German - Weber, Rademacher, Schmidt, etc.
patronyms: English - Johnson, Roberts, etc.
(patronyms are not as common in German)
place names: English - Churchill, Washington,
Lincoln, etc. German - Adenauer, Hindenburg,
Waldheim, etc.
personal characteristics: English - Small, Black,
Lionheart, etc. German - Klein, Schwarz,
Liwenherz, etc.
However, at the time that commoners started taking
names, Jews were forced to live in special ghettoes.
Depending on the nature of the local liege lord, that
was partly for their own protection and partly so
they could be controlled. The restrictions of the
ghetto were not only geographical: inhabitants were
usually restricted in the trades they could engage in.
Crafts were usually not allowed, since the craft
guilds excluded Jews; but Jews were allowed to engage
in banking (and related industries, such as
pawnbroking), mercantile pursuits, and long-distance
trading.
As the symbol of the pawnbroker was the three
gold balls (ef. the family arms of the Rothschilds),
Goldstein (`gold stone') became a popular name for
pawnbrokers or bankers (often there was little difference
between the two trades). Krämer was a
small-scale merchant, the prefix Mandel - usually indicated
a trader in almonds, and Bernstein is the
German word for `amber,' a semiprecious stone
traded along routes which stretched from the Middle
East up through Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania.
Schindler, on the other hand, was a guild craft.
The English cognate would be `shingler,' or `shingle-maker,'
and the word originally comes from the
Latin scindere , meaning `to split.' One thinks of
splitting a cedar wood block to make what we would
call shakes in English. However, the Schindler not
only made shakes, he also built and surfaced the entire
roof of a house; so in my opinion, the name really
corresponds better with the English surname
Tyler. As a guild craft, roofing would normally have
been closed to Jews during the era when surnames
came into use amongst the guild classes. Indeed, in
the book Schindler's List, there are two persons
named Schindler: Oskar Schindler, the protagonist,
who was a Catholic Sudetendeutscher (ethnic German
from Bohemia or Moravia); and a Brigadier
Schindler, an official with the Wehrmacht procurement
office in Berlin (who one presumes was not
Jewish).
About ten or twelve years ago, when I started
traveling in the course of my business (as international
business manager for a medical company), I
would often look up Schindlers in local phone books
and write them to see if we might be related. I underestimated
the commonness of the name. When I
grew up, on the Canadian Prairies, my teachers
were mostly WASP and had a hard time spelling or
pronouncing my name. I thought that my name was
unique and exotic, like those of my fellow ethnic
German- and Ukrainian-Canadian classmates. It
came as a surprise to find that there are Schindlers in
almost every large city of the world I have visited,
including those in Europe, Australia, South Africa,
and even Latin America. Starting about five years
ago, I started seeing the little white service wagons
of the Schindler Elevator Co., a Swiss company,
zipping around downtown Ottawa, Toronto, and
Montreal.
I engaged in many Briefwechsel with Schindlers
(and Shindlers) from London to New York to Melbourne
to Cape Town and found that many were, in
fact, Jewish. Most of these have anglicized (or yiddishized)
their names, to Shindler . As one London
Shindler told me, “The German language has nothing
but bitter memories for us, so my father adopted
the English spelling when we moved here after the
War.”
How this exception to the rule occurred is impossible
to determine, but it is not really difficult to
imagine that it could easily have happened over the
course of centuries of inter-marriage. I have often
wondered what might happen if, during one of my
visits to the Middle East, I should become the object
of interrogation by someone with, shall we say, an
urgent political agenda. Would he look into my
trousers to determine my religion? He would have a
problem, of course, because most North American
gentiles of my age bear the visible signs of the Covenant
of Abraham. How would I explain that while
many Jewish names may look German, they are not
really German.—No, I mean, they are German, or,
rather, they took certain German names, but there
are exceptions, you see ...
I just hope I can convince him my name's really
French.
ANTIPODEAN ENGLISH
Tassie Terms
It grieves Tasmanians that the Island State [or
Flyspeck or Speck ] is sometimes left off the map of
Australia, yet no one visiting the former convict colony
can be untouched by the tangible pervasiveness
of the past and the importance attached by Tasmanians
to activities and events which, in mainland
terms, are long gone. Part of this impression comes
from the state's increasing dependence on tourism
and its readiness to dress up the differences in ways
likely to appeal to tourists from overseas and from
other parts of Australia who feel they have moved
with the times. The very word convict is more prominent
in everyday spoken English than it is in, say,
Sydney, with compounds like convict brick, convict
building, convict garden, convict piner, convict relic,
and convict settlement. Terms that have validity only
in a historical context abound: carrying gang, Dumb
cell, Model Prison, probation gang, and separate
prison, or the place name Isle of the Dead, all of
which appear currently in literature prepared for
the tourist trade. So does the former name for the
colony, Van Diemen's Land (so named by the Dutch
explorer Abel Tasman), or its facetious variant,
Vandemonia (former Tasmanian convicts being
known on the mainland as Vandemonians).
Convict piner indicates both a retention of and a
transition from the past. A piner is and was a timbergetter
who specialized in Huon pine, a conifer producing
an attractive and highly valued timber, once
used for boatbuilding but now protected and employed
mainly in the manufacture of touristy artifacts.
Pining was unequivocally an occupation. The
piner once lived in a badger box , a makeshift shelter
named in allusion to the wombat's capacious hole in
the ground (the wombat being known uniquely in
Tasmania as a badger, to which it bears a passing
resembalance). This highlights the retention of terms
belonging to the past that have been given a new
and artificially maintained currency as part of the
Holiday Isle's tourist-oriented self-promotion. The
apple industry provides another example: apple
chewer is explicable as a sign of plenty, but apple
carver is the fruit of a somewhat desperate attempt
to provide entertainment; and Apple Island or Isle
is part now of a deliberately created nostalgia for
a past in which there was once a thriving export industry.
There is a plenteousness of natural resources.
The proprietorial use of the adjective Tasmanian —
found in compounds like Tasmanian kingfish, Tasmanian
pink-eye (a potato), Tasmanian scallop (the
shellfish, not, as in New South Wales, a slice of fried
potato), and Tasmanian red (an apple)—plays on an
ostensible difference in the island produce, as does
the much more audacious hijacking of Atlantic in
Tasmanian Atlantic salmon (farmed Tasmanian
salmon). Names of apples like cleopatra and democrat,
of potatoes like bintje, black derwent, and kennebec,
carry a Tasmanian stamp (in Australia at any
rate), as does the mutton bird (the shearwater, Puffinus
tenuirostris )—which has given Tasmanian English
the verb mutton bird or in its abbreviated form
bird, as well as lexical oddities like dizz (`cook a
mutton bird') for those foolhardy enough to contemplate
such a feat.
The indigenous flora and fauna likewise have
been carefully marketed to tourists as different : the
Tasmanian tiger (now probably extinct) lives in legend
and forlorn reaches of the remotest parts of the
island, the Tasmanian devil (a carnivorous marsupial
of undeniably fierce appearance) in tired zoos and
nature parks where nonexclusive animals like the
kangaroo and koala share the honors with a remarkable
range of diminutive marsupials genuinely peculiar
to Tassie, which have added value in an age that
cultivates the notion of wilderness. Again the tourist
trade looms with its advertisements for “cabins,
complete with queen-size bed and spa bath, and all
with spectacular river or wilderness views.”
But there are genuine regionalism lurking in
both the written and the spoken language: corinna
(an Aboriginal name for the Tasmanian tiger), mariner
(a corruption of the Aboriginal merrina for a seashell
used as a physical ornament), quoib (an Aboriginal
term for a wombat), and wing-wang (again an
Aboriginal term, this time for a fiery piece of lighted
bark thrown by Aborigines). All of which seems narracoupa
`very good' considering the strenuous efforts
made during the Black War of 1831 to disperse
the Tasmanian Aborigines. And there are spoken examples
of British regional dialect survivals: the litmus
test for a Tasmanian native is the pronunciation
and use of rum-un an `eccentric.' Indicative also is
familiarity with pocket , originally a `measure of hops
or the bag in which they were carried,' now used
exclusively of potatoes, and nointer a `scapegrace or
mischievous person.'
Tasmanian English, then, presents an interesting
face to the outside world, partly the face of a genuine
regional dialect nurtured by the stability and
comparative isolation of its population, and partly a
construct of the tourist industry, which harnesses
both the new and the old to create a viable contemporary
image.
VERBUM SAP
Verbum Sap The Media Is the Message
I have few data to support me, and my stamina
are not up to long, tedious research, but I have a
hunch that media —the main agendum on many a
pedant's plate these days—is well on its way to becoming
a standard singular noun, except perhaps
among hidebound literati and intransigent intelligentsia
on various university campi, in style books,
and in other blessed receptacles of holy semantic
writ. My hunch also tells me that there are more
people who use media as a singular noun than there
are people who write bristling letters to the editor
insisting on its immutable plurality—which is to say,
a lot.
The media itself/themselves has its/their needle
stuck in the old monaural groove. Most style books
stoutly maintain media is a plural noun, period. The
New York Times Manual of Style and Usage admits
the existence of an alternative but dismisses it as a
subversive plot: “ Media —still a plural, despite persistent
efforts to turn it into a singular.” It adds,
with smug ivory-tower certainty, “The singular is, of
course, medium.” The British Broadcasting Corporation's
Style Guide is also stuck in the mud. Its diktat
on media says this: “Plural. `The media sometimes
display (not displays) a sensational approach to
events.' Remember also that data, criteria, and phenomena
are plurals. But the plural of referendum is
referendums, not referenda!” The (Toronto) Globe
and Mail Style Book not only holds media's plurality,
but includes within its wide network “books, periodical
publications, radio, TV, advertising, mass
mailing.” How did they overlook town criers?
In a recent Globe and Mail column, a magazine
critic was taking pot shots at a gun-supporting U.S.
publication called Women's Self Defense. Among his
targets was a cover-story headline that read: “How
the Media Encourages Violence, Yet Discourages
Women from Owning Guns.” “The magazine,” he
tut-tutted, “is full of similar grammatical mistakes.”
I could detect no other solecisms, so I assumed he
was taking aim at the use of the singular verb with
the noun media.
What these dauntless defenders of the status
quondam fail to detect is that a linguistically fascinating,
and utterly inevitable, semantic change is occurring—has
already occurred, really—beneath
their very proboscises (or proboscides for the classically
rigorous). The result of this evolution is that
there is now both a plural media and a singular media,
and each means something different. The legitimate
and widely recognized singular meaning was
illustrated recently in the Globe and Mail, despite
the Style Book's taboo. The paper's television critic
began a story this way: “It is a mean, cold morning
down at CHCH-TV, where the media has been invited
to risk its collective life on the icy highway from
Toronto to Hamilton [to preview a series premiere].”
The sense is clear and logical here. This
media does not include book publishers and junk-mail
pushers, and no reader would take that meaning.
It means simply “the news media,” or what
used to be called “the press,” used as a collective
singular as early as 1797 (See OED press n., 14).
The press served the purpose well, as long as it involved
only “print” media. When radio and television
joined the club, some new collective handle was
felt to be needed. The public, in its wisdom, opted
for the nettlesome media, first used in this sense, to
anyone's knowledge, in a 1923 article in Advertising
& Selling called “Class Appeal in the Mass Media.”
In the same magazine, the singular medium appeared,
but so did the singular media. And ever
since, the purists have been more concerned about
bad Latin than good English.
The language has a way of sorting out awkward
situations, such as those created by the rather tortured
“proper” examples in the first paragraph.
Data, still in transition, is usually singular outside academic
and scientific settings. Stamina (plural of stamen ),
has been singular since the early 18th century
when, like media, it developed a new sense. Agenda
(which once had the singular agend in English) has
been treated as one since the turn of this century.
Literati and intelligentsia retain their snooty classical
endings because it looks good on them and other
pseudo- cognoscente. Campi is a joke. Bacteria has
just about completed its evolution to singularity. Criteria
and phenomena, heard everywhere as singles,
are encountering stern opposition from people who
take care to speak of a grafitto, but never say a confetto.
Many of them also talk of octopi, unaware that
the “correct” Greek plural is octopodes or that the
accepted anglicized one is octopuses, the simple English
plural - s or - es , as in thesauruses, campuses, formulas,
indexes, and memorandums.
Mediums would have made sense, but usage dictated
the plural media. And, certainly, it is still a
plural in such senses as “various media are on display
at the art show.” But media unmistakably has
also taken on a monolithic unitary sense. I am happy
to let the usually conservative American Heritage
Dictionary have the last word: “As with the analogous
words data and agenda, the originally plural
form has begun to acquire a sense that departs from
that of the singular [ medium ]; used as a collective
term, media denotes an industry or community.”
Contemporary English: Word Lists
In the early 1960s, while I was directing the
compilation and editing of The Random House Dictionary
of the English Language-Unabridged Edition,
it occurred to me that it would be extremely useful
to have a listing of a large number of English words
alphabetized from the right—that is, listed in normal
spelling order but with words ending in a followed
by those ending in b, and so on, to those ending
in z. My primary purpose was to facilitate the
examination of suffixes and desinences. It was a simple
matter to find words beginning with prefixes like
anti-, pre-, pro-, un-, etc., but finding those that
ended in -able, -graph, -ity, -ous , etc. was an entirely
different matter. There was no problem identifying
the obvious ones, but the less common ones were a
bit more elusive.
As Random House was unable to fund such research,
I approached someone I knew at Air Force
Intelligence, at Griffiss Air Force Base, in Rome,
New York, with my proposal, suggesting that such an
analysis would yield useful results for cryptanalytical
research. I was summarily turned down in a peremptory
letter that questioned the possible usefulness of
such an enterprise. I was consequently a little surprised—and
pleased—to be phoned a few months
later by one A.F. Brown, a professor in the Psychology
Department at the University of Pennsylvania,
who told me that he had been called in by Air Force
Intelligence and given the job of preparing just such
a list. It was at the suggestion of the agency that he
was getting in touch with me, as he had no notion of
how to go about the work. We met in my office some
time later, and, being far more interested in the results
than in who did the work or got the credit, I set
forth for him the procedures that would yield the
list. Although nothing was committed to writing, I
gave Brown to understand that all I expected in return
was a copy of the resulting work and an acknowledgment
of my help in his Foreword. Several
years later, the work was published in eight quarto-sized,
thick volumes, one set of which was duly delivered
to my office. The Foreword was totally devoid
of any acknowledgment, however.
The first three volumes contained listed solid
words, all in capital letters, alphabetized from the
right, with codes for each indicating which one or
more of some eighteen sources that had yielded
them. The fourth volume listed hyphenated forms
in the same way. The next four volumes contained
the same listings as the first four, but these were
alphabetized normally, from the left. The sources
were (mainly) the Merriam-Webster Unabridged,
Second Edition, and, in addition, as number of other
specialized medical, scientific, and other dictionaries.
I understand that an attempt had been made to
persuade Merriam to allow the use of the entry lists
for the Third Edition, but they refused. I cannot recall
the exact number of items in the lists, but my
impression is that it was approximately 750,000. [As
far as I know, the information is still available from
the National Technical Information Service, Alexandria
Virginia, U.S.A., either in microfiche or as an
enlarged machine copy of same.]
As this work is not mentioned in Contemporary
English: Word Lists, one must assume that its existence
was unknown to the author; but that should
not put off those who have need of a list that is not
only more up to date but is also more selective and,
on the grounds of frequency, probably more useful.
Hyphenated forms ( heaven-sent ) and multi-word
units ( old wives' tale ) are conveniently included in a
single listing; though these are alphabetized word-by-word
(putting black sheep before blackberry, taxfree
before taxable ), the list is short enough so that
these are readily found in the Forward part. I
missed black hole, which is widely used as a popular
metaphor, and was a little surprised find reported
speech, Excellency (presumably only a form of address),
and sandwich course. Different forms of the
same word are listed, e.g., exact, exactly, and exactness,
exaggerate, exaggerated, exaggeratedly, and exaggeration.
Is it vain of me to suggest that the author might
have found it useful to have had at hand my Suffixes
and Other Word-final Elements of English (Gale Research
Company, 1982)? It lists 1545 word-final elements,
many of which are not represented in the
book under review. One might well counter that
words containing those elements are therefore not
common enough to merit inclusion, but is that suffi-
cient reason to omit - mane words ( balletomane ),
- bund words ( moribund ), and all words ending in
- phobe or - phile ? I believe that to create a truly useful
work, even acknowledging its restrictions, the
author should have considered matters other than
raw frequency, the criterion applied for “use in the
classroom or at home.” For instance, I am not entirely
sure what purpose is served in long lists of
words ending in - ly that are adverbs formed on adjectives:
a formula would not only have sufficed but
would enable some words, like kindly and friendly ,
to have been especially marked. Introducing a formula
to cover - ize /- ise variants (and some others)
would have freed up space for more important inclusions.
Of the three suggested uses for the books—
teaching or learning English word formation, employing
the list as a source of frequently used words,
and having available “only items actually found in
English texts, without the—often delightful—oddities
one can find in larger dictionaries”—the last
seems to me the most telling. There are 23,163
items listed; those who argue about the size of native
speakers vocabularies would be hard put to find
any words or phrases that are not familiar and could
very likely extend the list without difficulty. If semantic
criteria were applied to homographs (which
appear only once), like saw , and to polysemic items,
like take up, take in, etc. , even the most naive
speaker could expand the list considerably.
Laurence Urdang
A Dictionary of Fly-Fishing
About a dozen years ago, when looking through
a mail-order catalogue of sports clothes, I noticed a
section offering fishing flies and became intrigued
with their names—names like Cree Sedge and
Greenwell's Glory . In a desultory way (I admit), I
tried to discover more about the names, with an eye
toward compiling a work on the subject. I did manage
to acquire a catalogue or two on fishing flies—
one, I recall, was from Leonard's—but the entire
project slipped away from me to be replaced by
other matters requiring more immediate attention.
When I saw the present work (in a British catalogue
of sports clothes), I sent away for it.
I should explain that I fished—though not “seriously”—when
I was about ten years old at summer
camp, where we caught mostly sunfish; I once
caught a lake bass, which we grilled on an open fire
and ate: only those who have eaten fresh-caught fish
know the difference between them and the store-bought
variety. Some forty years ago, several
friends persuaded me to join them on a party-boat to
go fishing off Rockaway Beach, near New York City.
The day was sultry, without the slightest breeze to
create even a suggestion of a cat's paw on the surface
of Sheepshead Bay; I caught about twenty-odd
fluke, which just lay there, scarcely my notion of
game fishing. As I had caught the most fish that day,
I won a bottle of scotch, but my friends' wives
viewed with some alarm our return bearing among
us about fifty fluke, all of which needed cleaning
and, of course, either eating or freezing. I have
avoided fishing since.
No self-respecting reader of books can consider
his education complete without having read Izaak
Walton. More recently, I have seen fishing competitions
on television, happy to see that the fish were
returned to the waters whence they have been
taken. Most recently, I saw on BBC-TV a most enchanting
film about two men who had gone fishing
for “monster” carp on a lake at a private estate
somewhere. It was quite beautiful. One might think
that watching other people fishing is like watching
the grass grow; it cannot compare for action with
The Terminator , yet it is far from boring—especially
if one is watching an edited version and does not
have to sit on shore or in a boat for hours on end—
and that particular program, punctuated here and
there by fishing lore, was dreamily engaging and
peaceful, well calculated to remove one's mind from
the cares of the day.
The literature of fishing goes back a long, long
time. As I know little about it, I shall not attempt to
expatiate on it here. The present book, although it
is called a dictionary, contains much ancillary encyclopedic,
folkloristic, and fishloristic information,
most of it carefully referenced to sources, which are
documented in an eight-page bibliography. (My
only criticism of it is that the listing for the fifteenth-century
Treatise of Fishing with an Angle appears as
the first item, under “Anon.”: it ought to have a
cross reference under Treatise , where I had sought it
in vain.)
Typically, an entry begins with the etymology of
the headword, e.g.:
baggot From a verbal participle, bagged,
meaning `big with young, pregnant.' (Sir Perceval,
1400: `The mere was bagged with sole.')
In many entries, the etymologies are far more replete:
that for barb covers twelve lines of text.
It would be more accurate to say that the terms
are explained, rather than defined; opinions are
given, techniques are discussed (carefully distinguishing
between dry fly-fishing and wet), and the
style is easy. The entries on mayfly ¹, mayfly ², and
mayfly ³, the first being any “up-winged insect,” the
second the “true mayfly,” and the third, the “stonefly,”
cover four full pages; more than six are devoted
to sea trout ; more than ten to nymph fishing . Mirror
and window goes into a fish's view of the world.
Line drawings illustrate the single turle, grinner,
blood, needle , and nail —all knots used in tying flies.
This book is a true pleasure to read, whether
one's experience with fish is limited to the occasional
accompaniment to chips, to Dover sole véronique ,
or to standing hip-deep in an icy stream at
dawn. It cannot be compared with a dictionary, per
se: its headwords serve more as a point of departure
for McCully to hold forth on the myriad aspects of
an activity—I hesitate calling fishing a “sport”—
which he evidently knows and loves so well.
Laurence Urdang
A Dictionary of Australian Underworld Slang
This dictionary combines two glossaries of underworld
slang which were compiled by two prisoners
in New South Wales in the middle of the twentieth
century. It is more than a slang dictionary:
Simes's own lexicographical analysis of the terms is
detailed and impressive, and he also provides a fifty-two
page essay on the history of the literature and
language of crime and the underworld.
The first glossary was compiled in 1944 by Ted
Hartley, who was imprisoned as a conscientious
objector in 1943 and 1944. Simes discovered this
glossary in 1989 among the papers of the Australian
novelist Kylie Tennant at the National Library of
Australia. Tennant came into contact with Hartley
through the Conscientious Objectors' Union, requested
the glossary from him, and used it when
writing her novel Tell Morning This . Given Hartley's
stand as a conscientious objector, it is not surprising
that his more expansive glosses often extend into sociological
commentary.
The second and longer glossary (containing 726
entries), called The Argot , was compiled in 1950 by
a long-term prisoner known only as Thirty-five (from
the custom of referring to a prisoner by the last two
digits of his official number). Although the existence
of the glossary was known, especially because Sidney
Baker cites some terms from it in the 1966 edition
of his The Austrialian Language , most of it has
been unpublished until now. Thirty-five had been a
school teacher, but the reason for his imprisonment
is unknown. A revised edition of half of The Argot
also exists. The revision includes material collected
in the period 1950-55, but written up at a later date
after Thirty-five was released from prison. (The
manuscript is dated October 1975.) From his commentary
it is clear that Thirty-five, when compiling
his glossary, had access to a number of books, including
Partridge's Slang To-day and Yesterday and
the 1945 edition of The Australian Language . His
more expansive glosses focus primarily on lexicographical
matters, including some etymological
speculation. Thirty-five wrote a Preface to The Argot
(included by Simes as an appendix), and he
makes some interesting observations about the kind
of material he collected.
Each entry in the dictionary consists of up to
three parts. The first is a blend of the headwords
and definitions from the three manuscripts (Hartley's,
Thirty-five's 1950 compilation, and Thirty-five's
revision), indicating by date which manuscript
is being used. The texts are edited conservatively,
so that spelling or typing errors are allowed to stand.
The second part is Simes's lexicographical commentary
on the material provided by Hartley and Thirty-five,
often giving information about the origin of the
term, whether it is Australian, whether it is otherwise
unrecorded, and so on. The third consists of
illustrative quotations (where available) from other
texts, mostly from Simes's own files.
Some of the material is international underworld
slang: hoist `steal,' beak Brit . `magistrate or
judge,' chiseller swindler,' dip `pickpocket,' the rap
the punishment, blame, etc.', screw Brit . `prison
guard.' Some of it is Australian underworld slang:
fruit for the sideboard `easy pickings,' tank a `safe,'
track `prison warder who carries contraband messages
or goods out of or into a prison for a prisoner.'
There is much previously unrecorded material: button
up `cease betting, or lower one's stakes considerably
when one is winning'; kipping `masturbating';
sappho term of endearment used between lesbians,
hence derisively addressed to passive homosexuals.
There are a few remnants of pig-Latin, as in oofterpa
for Poofter `homosexual' and opsca for cops . At
times, Thirty-five offers examples of the extended
use of this slang, as when describing a theft from a
prostitute's client:
A smartie will talk his cheese into going to the
rubbidy and dudding some pervy old mug into
lumbering her. When they both have the tweeds
down, the smartie will front up, work the mug
over a little for lumbering his missus, and then
shoot through with the bint and the mug's willie.
Some areas of lexical density reflect the social
structure of all-male prisons: most of the terms for
women are pejorative, there are numerous terms for
heterosexual sex, and an abundance of terms for the
penis. In his Preface, Thirty-five argues that the pejorative
attitudes towards women derive from the
criminal's “assessment of every woman according to
her eligibility as a mistress” (p. 222), whereas Hartley,
discussing the use of cunt comments: “Probably
this latter expression unconsciously carries with it
the contempt for femininity that most prisoners &
soldiers and others feel when forcibly shut off from
the other sex. In this connection it is saddening to
observe the slow but certain deteriation [ sic ] in prisoners,
some with fine feelings, until their fiancees
are spoken of as chromos and their wives as c-nt”
(p. 161). There is an obsession with homosexuality:
cat `passive homosexual,' hock `prisoner who is out
to engage in homosexual practices,' honey b-m `passive
homosexual,' whitewash someone's kidneys
`commit pederasty on.'
The glossaries include material which is not specific
to the underworld or to prisons. There are
terms from general English: make a balls of `muck
up, bugger up,' bang `intercourse,' outsider `horse
(dog) starting at long odds.' There are general Australian
colloquialisms: put the acid on `put the hard
word on,' battler `one who struggles (honestly) for a
living,' bint `girl,' blot `posterior or anus.' Anyone
who has surveyed the special language of a sub-group
will be aware of the problem of whether one
should include only words specific to the sub-group.
Thirty-five obviously feels that these terms which
are not specific to the sub-group have assumed a
special place in the `argot,' or are used intensively in
the underworld or in prison. Hartley is also aware of
the issue, and he includes imbecile with the comment:
“A common term of contempt in gaol, used
particularly of the warders.” Rhyming slang is a feature
of colloquial Australian English, but it appears
to have been especially intensive in the underworld
and in prisons at this time.
A valuable feature of this book is Simes's
lengthy introduction devoted to “The Literature of
Crime” and “The Language and Lexicography of
Crime.” Simes traces crime literature from the first
beggar-books, the German Die Betrugnisse der Gyler
(c. 1450) and Liber Vagatorum (c. 1510), and similar
texts from France, Spain, Italy, and England,
through the criminal biography, fictionalized accounts
of crime and the underworld, and finally the
detective novel. An interest in the language and lexicography
begins with the earliest texts, which usually
include glossaries, or explanations of the special
language of beggars, thieves, and so on. Simes gives
a full account of these glossaries, and then turns to
the development of dictionaries of underworld slang
from the 17th century to the present. There is detailed
attention to English, American, and Australian
material. This survey and its bibliographical material
will prove an indispensable guide to any lexicographer
interested in underworld slang. The one
omission I note in the Autralian material is Marcus
Clarke's “Sketches of Melbourne Low Life. 4. The
Language of Bohemia,” which appeared in the Australasian
in 1869. This article gives a brief history of
underworld slang and an extensive listing of underworld
terms in use in Melbourne in the 1860s.
The scholarship that has gone into this book is
exemplary, and the book will appeal to the general
reader as much as to the lexicographer.
Bruce Moore
The University of New South Wales
The Story of Webster's Third
At the time of publication of Webster's Third
New International Dictionary (1961), commonly referred
to as Webster's Third (but in these pages, for
the sake of brevity, as MW3 or MWIII ), I was director
of the reference department of Random House,
preparing what was later to be published as The Random
House Dictionary of the English Dictionary - Unabridged
Edition . It was therefore entirely inappropriate
for me to comment on either the MWIII itself
or the furor raised by its critics and supporters.
More than three decades later I readily recall my
opinions about both at the time, opinions that have
changed little over the years: there was no doubt
that the MWIII deserved criticism, but those benighted,
self-appointed guardians of the language
who were heaping vituperative imprecations on the
Dictionary (and its editors) were criticizing it for the
wrong things.
To be sure, I agreed—still agree—with those
who believe that the comment about ain't , “used
orally in most parts of the U.S. by many cultivated
speakers esp. in the phrase ain't I ,” was not reflective
of the facts: I knew many cultivated speakers in
most parts of the U.S., and the only time I ever
heard them say ain't was in jocular contexts or in
virtual quotations, like She ain't what she used to be .
I must admit that my evidence was entirely impressionistic,
but Gove provided no statistical support
for his contention, either. My chief criticisms, however,
were of a more general nature. The biggest
was that Gove had gone his merry way in producing
what he considered to be a lexicon of the language
but with little thought for those who were to use it:
no one could call the MWIII “user-friendly” (certainly
not in 1961, when, as far as I know, the expression
had not yet gained currency):
1. HEADWORDS. The practice of entering proper
names and adjectives with lower-case initials I found
off-putting because they were normally encountered
with capitals. To take a random example, there is
some question about the accuracy of description of a
word like macedonian : it appears in six main entries,
the first three of which bear homograph numbers.
The first, “belonging or relating to Macedonia,” has
“ usu cap ” as does the third, “a follower of the
bishop Macedonius ...,”; but is there substantial
enough evidence for these forms being spelled with
a lower-case m to warrant such treatment? I doubt
it. It is far more likely that the preponderance of
evidence would show that an entry with a capital
M might—conceivably—warrant a comment like,
“ rarely lower case .” Only the second entry, a noun
including the senses “native[s] or inhabitant[s]; descendant;
and language[s],” shows “ cap .” Where
Gove's researchers came up with such highly detailed
information about the distribution of such
forms is hard to imagine. Certainly, there is no principle
involved in such a distribution. Of the other
main entries, macedonian cry or macedonian call,
macedonian-persian , and macedonian pine , each
shows “ usu cap .” As all of these entries are conventionally
capitalized in normal English, it is difficult to
fathom the rationale for the treatment, and 5 CAPITALIZATION ,
in the Explanatory Notes, reveals nothing
useful.
2. PRONUNCIATIONS. Another area of confusion for
the user is the treatment of pronunciation. While it
must be acknowledged that pronunciations occupy a
great deal of space—owing largely to the dialectal
variants and the precision with which they are represented—most
American dictionaries are satisfied
to show major (American) dialect differences and to
rely on detailed variants to be the product of a judiciously
selected key word in the pronunciation key
(a subject I do not have the space to go into here).
But the entry for investiture in MWIII shows, for example:
\-t\?\\?\ch\?\(\?\)r, -,ch\?\ , -,ch\?\(r), -t\?\\?\t\?\, t\?\\?\ty\?\-\
[I think that the inferior dash beginning the third
pronunciation must be an error.] Counting the internal
variations, that is seven variants merely for
the last two syllables of the word: to see how the
first two are pronounced, one must go to the preceding
entry, investitive . It does not get any better, either.
If you want to know how to pronounce homozygote ,
all that is given is
\“+\,
which is not only cryptically unhelpful, but means
that the user has to filter back five columns to see
how homo-words are pronounced, then on to zygote
to see how that is pronounced. In other manifestations
of this curious, cumbersome style are
nouak.chott \\?\nwäk\?\shät, n\?\wä-, -sh\?\, (=\?\)=\?\=\
sad.du.ce.an \|==|sē\?\n\.
Such information might be appropriate to a reference
work for phoneticians, dialectologists, and
other linguists, but its usefulness and meaningfulness
in a dictionary for ordinary dictionary users is
not immediately apparent.
[Let me clarify what I take to be user-friendly in
a dictionary: most users pick up a dictionary occasionally
to check a spelling, pronunciation, definition,
etymology, or other information (like usage and synonymy).
For some, “occasionally” means several
times a year; for a few, it means several times a week.
One can hardly expect to become steeped in the recondite
style of a dictionary in such brief encounters,
especially since they might well be for entirely different
purposes. Thus it is user-unfriendly of a dictionary—any
reference book, in fact—to exhibit a style
so involved as to be virtually unassimilable save by a
dedicated, experienced few: except for the arcana,
dictionary style should be revealed transparently to
anyone picking up the book, and no one should be
required to take a course in dictionary navigation or
to spend half an hour adjusting his eyes to read reams
of six-point type.]
3. DEFINITIONS. One of the most difficult areas to
assess in a dictionary is the quality of its definitions.
Several philosophies of defining prevail—not too
abstruse to go into in VERBATIM, but a not entirely
appropriate aside here—and the style cleaved to by
Gove attempts an approach that is progressively restrictive
or expansive, depending on the nature of
the word defined. It works much of the time, particularly
for highly denotative ostensive objects; but it
creates ludicrous results when applied to simple
things. One of the examples frequently cited of the
worst reflexes of the style can be seen in the main
definition of door :
1 a: a movable piece of firm material or a
structure supported usu. along one side and
swinging on pivots or hinges, sliding along a
groove, rolling up and down, revolving as one of
four leaves, or folding like an accordion by means
of which an opening may be closed or kept open
for passage in or out of a building, room, or other
covered enclosure or a car, airplane, elevator, or
other vehicle.. b: a similar part by which access
is prevented or allowed to the contents of a repository,
cabinet, vault, or refrigeration or combustion
chamber
It is not difficult to understand how such a definition
could be constructed from a collection of citation
slips; what is hard to see is how, once it was written,
someone who had any sensitivity for English style
and communication could have let it get into print.
Another example occurs at hotel :
2 a: a house licensed to provide lodging and
usu. meals, entertainment, and various personal
services for the public : INN b: a building of
many rooms chiefly for overnight accommodation
of transients and several floors served by elevators,
usu. with a large open street-level lobby
containing easy chairs, with a variety of compartments
for eating, drinking, dancing, exhibitions,
and group meetings (as of salesmen or convention
attendants), with shops having both inside and
street-side entrances and offering for sale items
(as clothes, gifts, candy, theater tickets, travel
tickets) of particular interest to a traveler, or providing
personal services (as hairdressing, shoe
shining), and with telephone booths, writing tables,
and washrooms freely available
One is tempted to comment on further amenities
(e.g., free parking, porters to carry one's luggage,
B-girls, hookers, house detectives) and on further
restrictions (there are few hotels in large cities that
make “washrooms freely available” even to hotel
guests outside their rooms, lest some wretch needing
to use the facility wander in off the street); but
would anyone insist that the presence of shops be
restrictively incorporated in the definition of hotel ?;
would a native speaker of English refer to restaurants
and other public rooms as “compartments for
eating, drinking, dancing,” etc.? Indeed, there is no
definition of compartment in the MWIII that fits the
sense to which it is stretched in the definition of
hotel .
I could go on (and on) with other criticisms, but
the purpose of this essay is to review Herbert Morton's
book, not the MWIII , regardless of temptation.
In general, Morton tells the story of Noah Webster
and his legatees in a straightforward, sympathetic,
but not entirely unbiased manner. To be sure, the
facts are present, awry in only once instance, which
I shall come to later. In most cases, it would be
difficult, without substantial knowledge, to confute
some of the information presented. I knew Govenot
well, I hasten to say, but, from Morton's account,
neither did anyone else. I found him a rather
dour, lugubrious individual, and even the author of
Webster's Third finds it difficult to recount many
tales exemplifying his humanity, any a sense of humor.
If sobersidedness make not an attractive man,
it certainly need not have affected Gove's proficiencies
as a lexicographer. But G. & C. Merriam (as
the company was then styled) was not Philip Gove,
and some of the less savory practices of that organization's
salesmen during the late 1950s—always
vigorously denied as company policy by executives—inevitably
rubbed off on those who one
hopes were innocent of such activities.
Morton's history of the company is probably
reasonably accurate, though one should note that its
sources could scarcely be said to be unbiased, most
being company records and either present or former
employees. All the complimentary critiques are well
attended and quoted; the adverse are given equal
time, as it were, but not treated with much respect.
As I suggested above, they should not be paid much
heed, being either the result of misconception, ignorance,
lack of understanding, just plain bigotry and
prejudice, or—surely later on during the dictionary
controversy of the 1960s—the mere business of parroting
others' Webster -bashing.
Were I accorded the space allowed the author
of Webster's Third to argue each point with which I
take issue, this would not be a review but another
book, and I have rambled from the main purpose
already. Yet, there is one bald misstatement of fact
in the book that cannot go unassailed. Morton
writes:
Especially noteworthy was the 1972 International
Conference on Lexicography in English, a
landmark event that attracted foreign as well as
American scholars and practitioners. Organized by Raven I. McDavid, Jr., and Audrey R. Duckert, the
conference was held June 5-7, 1972, in New York City. The proceedings
were published in the Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences 211 (1973). The origins of the conference are described in
McDavid's opening remarks. Gove did not participate in the planning
or appear on the program, although two of his colleagues gave
papers, Woolf on defining and Artin on pronunciation. Originally
proposed by James Sledd in 1968, the conference
was organized by Raven I. McDavid, Jr.
In the Opening Remarks referred to, Raven McDavid
did not actually give Sledd credit for suggesting the
subject conference but the idea, of another one. McDavid's
further description of the origins of the New
York Academy of Sciences [NYAS] conference are a
curate's egg of fact: the facts remain as recorded (I
trust) in the files of the NYAS, to wit: In the mid
1960s, as a member of the NYAS (and, as far as I
know, the only person associated with the conference
who was a member before, during, and after it), I
approached the Executive Director of the NYAS, Eunice
Thomas Miner, suggesting a conference on lexicography
in English. At that time, there was no recognition
in the Academy of the existence of
linguistics, which fell somewhere among the various
psychology and sociology stools. I was turned down,
but not entirely discouraged, and decided to return
to the fray several years later, when I had more time.
I approached the Academy again after leaving
Random House, in 1969, and, the climate and directorship
having changed, received more encouragement.
Still, it was made clear to me that because I
was not on the staff of a college or university, I
should have to find someone who was and who
would support my case. I got in touch with Frederic
G. Cassidy, of the University of Wisconsin, now
widely known as the editor of the Dictionary of
American Regional English , whom I had known in
the early 1940s. Cassidy came to New York and met
with the board (and me). It subsequently developed
that he was too busy to take on the burdens of the
chairmanship of the conference but suggested McDavid,
whom I knew, as I had engaged him in the
early 1960s as a consultant to the Random House
Dictionary . McDavid agreed to become involved,
came to New York, and brought Audrey Duckert (of
Amherst, Massachusetts) into the picture as his associate.
Thereafter, I worked closely with the NYAS to
gain the participation of linguists and lexicographers
in the United States and abroad and to further the
purpose of the conference. In McDavid's Opening
Remarks he refers to some of my (later) work in
these words:
The committee of the Present-Day English Section
of the Modern Language Association] then
coopted Mr. Laurence Urdang, a professional lexicographer
and the envoy to the Academy of the
other group; he had been particularly helpful with
practical suggestions, and in getting financial support
from publishers.... To ...Mr. Urdang goes
credit for negotiating with the Academy....
Notwithstanding, my claim to prior inspiration remains.
Also, considering that the costs of the conference
were borne almost entirely by the NYAS (with
contributions from the Center for Applied Linguistics,
G. & C. Merriam Company, Holt, Rinehart &
Winston of Canada, Limited, Laurence Urdang Inc.,
Longman Group Limited, Scott Foresman and Company,
and Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.), McDavid's
casual reference to the Academy's organizational
and other help, while not atypical, is a bit of a low
blow.
None of this has much to do with Webster's
Third , the book or the dictionary, and I should say
that anyone who has an interest in the documentation
of such things would be well served to obtain a copy
of it (the book); it is well written and interestingly set
forth. Considering its subject matter, one should
more surprised at its occasional even-handedness
than shocked at its bias.
Laurence Urdang
Organized by Raven I. McDavid, Jr., and Audrey R. Duckert, the
conference was held June 5-7, 1972, in New York City. The proceedings
were published in the Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences 211 (1973). The origins of the conference are described in
McDavid's opening remarks. Gove did not participate in the planning
or appear on the program, although two of his colleagues gave
papers, Woolf on defining and Artin on pronunciation.
The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical
Principles
First, let us look at the statistics (as presented
on the back of the dustjacket of the New Shorter
[NSOED ]): 500,000 definitions; 96,600 headwords;
7.5 million words; 25,250 variant spellings; 83,000
illustrative quotations; 7300 sources of quotations
(including VERBATIM and 5900 individual authors,
among which appears the name of your proud editor).
American dictionaries based their counts on
“entries,” a generously defined, arbitrarily artificial
term cooked up between the G. & C. Merriam Company
and the US Treasury Department during the
1930s (when that governmental department was responsible
for purchasing, a function now performed
by the General Services Administration). An entry in
US commercial dictionary parlance means every
headword (that is, main entry set flush left, often in
larger boldface type); every inflected form; every
run-on entry (the self-evident boldface words consisting
of the headword plus a productive ending
like - tion , - ly , - ness , etc.); list words (those beginning
with a common prefix of transparent meaning like
inter -, re -, un -, etc., that are merely listed at their
approximate alphabetical place, without definitions
or other lexicographical information); every variant
(counted only once); and every change in a part of
speech. In a typical college dictionary, which might
have, say, 85,000 headwords the entry count (which
is prominently displayed in the jacket blurbs) is
about twice that, or 170,000. In the US, publishers
do not generally advertise the number of definitions
in their dictionaries but flaunt their entry counts. At
a rough guess, the NSOED contains about 200,000
such “entries,” or some twenty per cent fewer than
the Random House Unabridged [ RHDU ], the popular
dictionary nearest in size.
It must be stressed, however, that although the
NSOED might include fewer headwords—it has no
biographical and geographical entries, for example—it
generally accords each entry fuller treatment.
There are, as we shall see, other differences;
but on the most superficial level one might observe
that the NSOED offers more information about
fewer words, which may well prove an enticement
to those who already have a largish dictionary (even
the RHDU ).
Although the Preface describes the content and
provenance of this new edition, it is disappointing
that no statement of purpose, no fundamental linguistic
or lexicographic principle is anywhere set
forth. Reference is made to the OED , of course, but
the present work could scarcely be said to reflect
the same philosophies. Notable is the term illustrative ,
used to describe the quotations accompanying
the definitions: aside from their mixed success in
serving to illustrate, quotations served a somewhat
different purpose in the OED (and, indeed, in their
application in some other dictionaries): they were
the source matrix from which the definitions were
derived.
It is worth reminding ourselves that the NSOED
is a British dictionary, although that might not be a
particularly intrusive factor in its use, for variant
spellings have been given ample coverage. But it
does affect the pronunciations, which, given in the
symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet, are
(as usual for British dictionaries) for the prestige dialect
called Received Pronunciation [ RP ]. In RP, Athanasian
is pronounced /a\?\n/, while Americans
would pronounce the final syllable /\?\/;
curiously, that is shown as a variant pronunciation
under Asian, Asiarch, and Asiatic, and it is hard to
see why it was omitted from Athanasian ; perhaps
the NSOED editors have the inside skinny (a sense
that is in, along with solid coverage of other neologisms,
slang and standard). It is not made clear why
the standard IPA transcriptions [ai] or [ai] was not
used for the vowel sound in I, why, might , etc.: the
NSOED shows /\?\/.
As in other British dictionaries, headwords are
not syllabified, so one cannot use dictionaries in
England to determine where a word may be conventionally
hyphenated. Typesetters in England seem to
know that the words Eng-land and Eng-lish are so
hyphenated, a practice that has eluded many American
compositors and proofreaders, including those
working for some of the “best” publishers. In the
early 1970s. I devised what I thought was a useful
system for showing syllabification of boldface words
in the Collins English Dictionary: places where hyphens
could occur were marked by a tiny plus sign
(except for spelling hyphens, which always permitted
end-of-line hyphens); places that marked syllable
breaks but where hyphenation was avoided,
were marked by a centered dot:
pit·y, cit·y, moth·er-in-law, etc.
pho+ne+mics, de+ter+mi+na+tion, in+ter+cit·y,
etc.
The Collins is a British dictionary, but, despite the
fact that some compositors clambered over one another
to acquire the computerized lists of such
words showing the breaks, others paid the information
little heed—particularly Collins Publishers—
and the marks were omitted entirely from the Second
Edition of their dictionary.
Preferred American convention is, naturally,
not reflected in the text of entries: British spelling
obtains. But the preferred American convention of
writing as two words an adverb-adjective combination
when the adverb ends in - ly is also violated:
British practice calls for widely-spread, closelyrelated
(which appear under Athapaskan ), while
standard practice in the US would write these as two
words, hyphenating only modifying adverbs not
ending in - ly : well-known, well-thought-of, easygoing .
(These rules change if the combination appears
in predicative position.) Elsewhere, Briticisms
might be felt to intrude in definitions, with words
like dustman, dock-porter , etc., appearing here and
there. Differences of a more serious nature occur
when definers use words less familiar than the entry
being defined: roasting-jack for “mechanical spit”;
tenuity for “thinness”; invest for “award” are a few
examples. Not all US variants are entered; for example,
greenkeeper is an entry, but greenskeeper , the
American form, is nowhere to be found. As mentioned,
the pronunciations are British: the variant
pronunciation of controversy , in which the stress is
on the (shortened) second syllable, is shown, but
that is not heard in the US; neither is the given pronunciation
of intermediary , which ends \?\ in
BE but /\?\/ in AE. Although there are
r -dropping dialects in AE, they do not predominate,
as in BE \?\, etc. for card . The common BE pronunciation
of respite is /\?\resp\?\t/, one not commonly
heard in AE—in fact, one that smacks of a spelling
pronunciation to an AE speaker; the pronunciation
/\?\resp\?\t/, standard in AE, is only a variant in BE (but
one I have never heard).
Emphasis in definitions seems sometimes askew:
interloper ... 2 A person who meddles in another's
business (esp. for profit); an intruder.
The problem here is in the use of business : in a definition,
one would expect the literal sense, not the
(more colloquial) sense of `affairs' as met with in
mind your own business, none of your business , etc.
Yet if one applies that criterion, the definition is too
narrow, particularly with the emphasized mention
of “profit”), and it would have been more accurate
to have put the general sense, “an intruder,” first.
It must be noted that definitions are ordered historically
(as the title of the NSOED implies), not by
frequency. Thus, the first definition of interlude refers
to a short dramatic piece performed between the
acts of the miracle plays, and the common modern
sense of `interval' is not met with till definition 2.
That is merely a fact—many American dictionaries
follow the same theme, notably, the MWIII .
Were space available, many other strengths and
weaknesses of the NSOED could be enumerated in
detail; but it would be more useful to offer an overall
assessment and to suggest where this dictionary
might fit into a library, personal or institutional. The
NSOED is an impressive, extremely usable dictionary
for those sophisticated enough to know how to
use it, by which I mean not only Americans: those
who have an earlier edition would be well served to
replace it with this one. Also, the preceding comments
leveled against coverage of American English
should in no way affect those who care little about
how Americans use the language, for, in many respects,
the NSOED is simply a superior dictionary. I
must express a prejudice, however, for the benefit of
all who have a personal computer with a CD-ROM and
who have the wherewithal to acquire the OED2e on
CD-ROM: there is nothing like it in terms of ease of
access, speed, convenience (as compared with hoisting
one or more volumes of the OED2e or NSOED
every time one wants to look something up). For
casual use, it would be extravagant to go to such an
expense; but for anyone who does even the most
informal research into the lexicon of English, the
CD-ROM version is essential and indispensable: certainly,
no library in the world has any excuse for not
having it.
The problems of binding a 3800-page book are
formidable, but it can be done, and I believe that
OUP customers would have been better served by
being offered a one-volume edition (perhaps with a
needed lectern of its own), enabling the NSOED to
compete more readily with the other main contenders
among large dictionaries, the MWIII and the
Random House Unabridged .
Laurence Urdang
“A father who underwent a sex change no longer has
to wear male clothes to visit her son.” [From The (Montreal)
Gazette , n.d. Submitted by .]
“One of nine women will get breast cancer as well as
many men.” [From the Los Angeles Times , , page E7. Submitted by .]
Swinging, Swaling, Swedging
In his poem, Birches , Robert Frost describes a
custom among country boys of climbing birch trees
to the very crown, so high the tree can no longer
support them but bends over submissively and lowers
them to the ground. Frost calls this custom
swinging birches , and the one who practises it, a
swinger of birches . Though the custom was not universal,
back in the days when youngsters still invented
their own entertainments, enough of them
swung the limber birches for it to be a common pastime.
I even have found a Ukrainian native who remembered
swinging birches.
But being widespread, the game apparently
earned other names depending on locality. In the
rural Rhode Island towns of Foster and Glocester
(Providence County) two other names for the pastime
have surfaced. Asked if he had ever climbed
the trees and let them return him to the earth, John
Holdsworth of Foster exclaimed, “Oh, I've swaled
hundreds of `em.” Swaled? Another oldtimer,
Henry Hawkins of Glocester likewise speaks of swaling
birches, adding that it did not always work out as
one hoped it would: sometimes the 15-20-foot gray
birch would tip part way down only to falter, leaving
the climber dangling halfway, a predicament, indeed.
There is no going back.
As a noun, swale rolls off the tongues of countrymen
frequently enough, and means a `tract of wet
ground,' as in the geological term describing rolling
prairies that have swells and swales. But swale as a
verb harks back to English usage of an early age.
The OED2e suggests Shropshire as the source of the
verb, and it cites an 1863 quotation that bears out
our meaning: “The great plumed hat flapped and
swaled over my eyes.”
As if that were not variation enough, another
Glocester dweller, Walter Battey, refers to this custom
as swedging birches . Swedge? I recognized the
verb swedge as meaning `bend or spread left and
right the teeth of a handsaw that had become too
straight through much use, and hence caused the
saw to bind.' A tool called a swedge soon remedies
this ailment. The term swedging a birch thus seems
to have sprung from this bending action. Such are
the imaginative borrowings of the English language.
OED2e lists swedge as a variant of swage and suggests
that swage , in turn, is an early form of swag a
`swaying or lurching motion.' In support, the dictionary
offers this quotation dating circa 1530: “that
the fruit may not ... disfigure the Tree by swagging
it down with weight.”
Do these obscure verbs, swale, and swedge ,
have a future? Only time will tell, or only as long as
youngsters swing, swale, or swedge birches.
Objectively Speaking
I had been cruising the club for less than an
hour when I bumped into Roger. After exchanging a
few pleasantries, he lowered his voice and asked,
“What do you think of Martha and I as a potential
twosome?”
“That,” I replied, “would be a mistake. Martha
and me is more like it.”
“Oh? You're interested in Martha?”
“I'm interested in clear communication.”
“Fair and square,” he agreed. “And may the
best man win.” Then he added, with a sigh: “Here I
thought we had a clear path to becoming a very
unique couple.”
“You couldn't be a very unique couple, Roger.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
“Martha couldn't be a little pregnant, could
she?”
“Say what? You think that Martha and me...”
“Martha and I.”
“Oh.” Roger blushed and set down his drink.
“Gee, I didn't know.”
“Of course you didn't,” I assured him. “Most
people don't.”
“I feel very badly about this.”
“You shouldn't say that. I feel bad ...”
“Hooray, Roger!” Martha herself wafted towards
us. “Seeing you, the evening gets interesting.”
She rested a hand on his shoulder. “Who have
you two been gossiping about, hm?”
They were obviously well-matched.
I excused myself at once, left Roger in Cupid's
hands and went over to check out another participle
I'd noticed dangling by the bar. On my way there,
however, I was charmed by a collective noun (foreign,
I thought) having a singularly bad time in the
middle of the dance floor with a profoundly intransitive
verb.
“Pardon—may I cut in?”
Her partner looked past tense, indeed, completely
overwrought, and gratefully stood aside. At
first, the lady met my preposition with declension,
but in a short time we were conjugating magnificently,
even recklessly. “Ooh, you are the definite
article,” she sighed.
“Dvandva,” I whispered, knowing that she
would understand.
It was pluperfect—until I signaled for her bill.
When the maître d' brought it over, I nearly split an
infinitive: the syntax alone was astronomical!
“The hijacker hid a pistol in his hat that only fires
blanks.” [From New York Newsday , .
Submitted by .]
Classic Problem
Typical among the words over which purists agonize,
Fowler-type authorities dither, and about
which lexicographers write usage notes are the classic/classical
pair. As in most such cases, the question
is easily answered by looking up the definitions of
the words in a dictionary substantial enough to offer
example contexts. The problem, as in most usage
matters, is that those who fail to distinguish between
classic and classical, infer and imply, like and as , etc.,
are blissfully unaware that any question exists: consequently,
not being unsure of anything, they never
bother to check. One is moved to suggest that it is
the responsibility of teachers of English to implant
in the subconsciouses of their students a soupçon of
suspicion that there might be something questionable
about a number of words and constructions in
the language. These days one despairs of the teachers,
for they, too, seem totally oblivious to style
and traditional practice. This is borne out by a Sunday
Times article [13 March 1994] about a survey
showing that fewer than half of entrants to university
were capable of identifying to which part of
speech words in a handful of very simple sentences
belonged.
The classic/classical distinction has become
manifest in Britain with the recent establishment of
a new radio station, Classic FM. Radio 3, the longstanding
BBC station that has broadcast classical music
for many years, has not been replaced by this
commercial parvenu, but it should be noted that Radio
3 broadcasts classical music, while the new station
is engaged in a different enterprise. Not only is
Classic music not always classical, but there is an
utter lack of sensitivity in the selection of music
played: Anitra's Dance could well be preceded by
Schoenberg and followed by Scarlatti or O Sole Mio
sung by Tagliavini. One night, I tuned in and heard
an extraordinarily cacophonous piece that sounded
like souls groaning in hell alternating with dissonant
organ music; as I could not believe what I was hearing,
I continued to listen; I was tortured for about
half an hour but persisted, as I wanted to hear the
title in order to make certain that I would switch off
if anyone ever threatened to play it again. Unfortunately,
I have forgotten the title (and composer), but
a reader might recognize it from my reasonably accurate
description.
Radio stations that play classical music might be
criticized for allowing Telemann to be segued by
Tchaikovsky, but that is, surely, a sophisticated criticism.
This listener's knowledge of and taste in classical
music is not very sophisticated, but the sequences
broadcast by Classic FM serve to demonstrate the
worst features of the differences between classical
and classic . Yet, perhaps predictably for those who
have a cynical view of public taste, a recent [March
1994] newspaper report reveals that Classic FM has a
regular weekly audience nearly two million greater
than that of Radio 3.
While on the subject of British radio, about a
year ago, the radio station Jazz FM was establishd in
London, purportedly to play Jazz morning, noon,
and night. From the music played, it would appear
that all music not classifiable as classical is considered
to be Jazz, requiring a new definition of jazz to
be considered by (British) lexiographers.
“While she won't admit it, [the character] clearly is a
woman in denial.” [From a play review in The Berkshire
Eagle , . Submitted by .]
“ `Me and another student got up and started teach—
ing class ourselves,' [Sandra] Baker said of a business English
class in which she said the instructor missed three
weeks of classes.” [From the Chicago Sun-Times , , page 14. Submitted by .]
“Volunteers must take 48 hours of sexual assault
training.” [From the San Bernardino Sun , . Submitted by .]
ETYMOLOGICA OBSCURA
The Origin of llama
[VERBATIM XX, 3, 16] On Lima's (Peru) main
square stands an equestrian statue of General San
Martin. Sculpted into its pedestal is, inter alia , the
figure of a woman holding a torch. But the torch
does not emit a flame: instead a surprising little
llama stands on its tip. My theory for this oddity is
that the artist misunderstood his commission; in
Spanish llama means flame, while in Quechua it is
the name of the furry beast.
A Primrose by any Other Name...
The spring flower we call the primrose ( Primula
vulgaris ) is native to Britain and presumably has had
English names as long as the language has been spoken
in the British Isles. However, primrose is a relatively
recent name for the flower, being first recorded
only in the 15th century, and no Old English
name for it is known. It is possible that before the
15th century both the primrose and the cowslip
( Primula veris ) were regarded as one and the same
and called cowslips [Old English cuslippe ]. Since
where the two species grow near to each other they
hybridize freely giving rise to intermediate forms,
the need for two names might not have been apparent
in earlier times.
The word primrose is often believed to be derived
from the Latin prima rose `first rose.' There is,
however, an alternative derivation, since, in Middle
English, earlier than the first record of primrose , the
plant was known as primerole or saynt peterworte.
Primerole probably derives from the Old French
primier `first,' with the diminutive suffix - ole , implying
smallness.
The remarkable ability of most species of Primula
to hybridize with ease whenever they meet has
further confused the English names of the primrose
and its close relatives. The hybrid between the
primrose and the cowslip ( Primula veris x vulgaris ,
sometimes called Primula variabilis ) is known as the
oxlip . Usually it is called the common oxlip because
it occurs quite frequently, but purists prefer to call it
the false oxlip since there is a third species, Primula
elatior , now found only in the eastern counties of
England, which is, for them, the true oxlip . To add
to the confusion the true oxlip is also known as the
paigle , a name which, in the past, has been rather
indiscriminately applied to several wildflowers including
buttercups. In some country areas of England
paigle (or pagle , or pagyll ) is still the local name
for the cowslip. It may be derived from the Old
English paegle or paegel `winecup.' This would be
most appropriate, since around the time paigle came
into use cowslip blooms were used to make a very
popular country wine.
Shakespeare knew of primroses ( Cymbeline ),
cowslips ( The Tempest ), and oxlips ( The Winter's
Tale ), and presumably the difference between them
although there seems to be no way of knowing
which oxlip he meant. Wordsworth was, perhaps,
less well informed when in his Peter Bell he wrote:
A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.
It might have been a primrose, although they usually
grow in woods and under hedges. A cowslip is
rather more likely since they grow in meadows or, of
course, it could have been an oxlip. Peter Bell
should have taken a closer look.
The Endangered English Dictionary: Bodacious
Words Your Dictionary Forgot
David Grambs's name should be known to word
buffs, for he has written several books—this is his
sixth—about the English language. He has been active
in lexicography for a number of years, originally
on The American Heritage Dictionary , more recently
on The Random House (Unabridged) Dictionary, Second
Edition .
This book, the title of which suggests that it
might deal with dictionaries, is a dictionary of difficult,
unusual, often obscure, obsolete words, a combination
of Poplollies and Bellibones , by Mrs.
Heifetz, and The New York Times Everyday Reader's
Dictionary of Misunderstood ... Words , by this reviewer
(recently published in a revised, British edition
by Bloomsbury under the title, Dictionary of
Difficult Words [plug, in case you missed it]). Both
kinds of books have been around for many years:
indeed, the latter type preceded general dictionaries
that treat the broad spectrum of the English lexicon,
for it was thought unnecessary to provide definitions
and other information about words familiar
to anyone who spoke English. Nowadays, of course,
it is felt that a general dictionary ought to describe
the lexicon of the language (as far as space permits),
which is why modern dictionaries devote so much
space to entries for words like the, a, and, run, jump ,
and play .
The entries in Endangered can be divided
roughly into two classes: those one knows and those
one does not. Among the latter are some engaging
terms that word lovers are likely to add to their writing
(or drop into casual cocktail-party conversations),
and, in some instances, might actually fill a
need. My favorites among these, which are not
found in the present work, are tally and leman ,
which mean a `person with whom one cohabits without
benefit of matrimony.' The struggle that
spawned POSSLQ, significant other, partner , and other
miscegenations and ennuiisms could have been
avoided by resurrecting these terms, though leman ,
owing to its - man ending, might not make it through
the stultifying morass of today's political correctness.
Many of the rare words in the book are synonyms
that have dropped out of the language for one
reason or another, the main one being that they
were not used. For many, it might be impossible to
find evidence for their existence outside the single
quotation in the OED or similar source, and they
might have been nonce coinages. Their rarity is attributable
to what linguists refer to as the economy
of language , which is akin to the physical law stating
that two objects cannot occupy the same space at
the same time. Most of the time, two (or more)
words that appear to be “pure” synonyms semantically
tend to diverge in application or distribution
(e.g., windpipe/trachea ), in frequency (e.g., niveous/
snowy, lutaceous/muddy ), or in connotation ( maternal/motherly ).
[This matter is discussed at some
length in the Introduction to my Oxford Thesaurus .]
Notwithstanding, many people derive enjoyment
from wallowing in peculiar, curious, and unfamiliar
words, which often provide a source of
amusement. The selection of such words is likely to
be personal, reflecting the tastes and proclivities of
the compiler, hence one is hard put to quarrel with
the choices. These and other factors are well set
forth by the author in his Preface. It is important to
mention that all words in Endangered are pronounced
(using the Moo Goo Gai Pan system), all are
accorded succinct, clear definitions, and all are provided
with example contexts.
In the last hundred pages of Endangered an attempt
is made at a reverse dictionary, yielding a
more or less elaborate index to the dictionary section.
Such reverse dictionaries as exist ( Bernstein's
Reverse Dictionary having been a popular example
for many years) work well for those users whose
word sense coincides with that of the compiler. Ted
Bernstein's book never worked well for me, but I
might not be a fair touchstone in such matters. In
Grambs's book, the single-word synonyms work
fairly well, but, as elsewhere, the system breaks
down when trying to anticipate where a user ought
to look to find a word: not everyone is likely to
choose the same “reverse” concept. The problem
has been anticipated by using more than one synonym
and by providing entries under both. For example,
laziness or sluggishness : SEGNITY appears
both under laziness and sluggishness; thick-lipped:
LABROSE appears also under lips, having thick . Still,
no system could work perfectly for all users.
Those who enjoy word play—which includes
certain puzzle solvers who seem to need all the help
they can find that is not already provided by dictionaries,
special puzzlers' reference books, thesauruses,
etc.—should find Endangered a useful, welcome addition
to their libraries. Those who simply harbor an
abiding affection for the language and like having
fun with it will want to acquire the book for delectable
browsing.
Laurence Urdang
“Medical Consultant ... in a growing company
which manages medical malpractice.” [From an employment
ad of Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard
Medical Institutions, Inc., in the Boston Globe , . Submitted by .]
Answers to Anglo-American Crossword No. 67
There was an error in the
diagram for Puzzle No.
67, for which we apologize:
the blocking square
in the middle of 17 down
should be moved one
square to the left.
