What's in a Roman Name?
The toponymy of Rome offers an entertaining
supplement to the study of its twenty-seven
hundred years of history. The etymology of the
name of the city of Rome itself remains a mystery.
Legend attributes it to a more or less imaginary eponymous
founder Romulus , or, in a less familiar version,
to a Trojan woman, Rhome (whose name is a
Greek word for `strength'). Modern scholars attempt
to explain the name more scientifically as being
based on a word meaning `river,' or on an Etruscan
name. Some investigators, noting evidence for a
Latin word ruma meaning `breast,' have concluded
that Rome owes its name to the supposed shape of
the Palatine Hill as it appeared to the eye of an exceptionally
determined observer. The Grand Tetons
in the American West illustrate this same phenomenon
in French.
Major natural features of the city whose ancient
names are still in use include the Tiber River and the
seven hills. The etymology of all these names remains
as elusive as that of Rome itself. Various legends
were invented to account for them; for example,
the name of the Capitoline Hill (from which
capitol comes) was said to be derived from a human
head ( caput ) found on it when the temple of Jupiter
Capitolinus was being built. This was taken as a portent
of future glory. The adjacent Palatine Hill,
which was eventually reserved for imperial structures
(whence our words palace and palatial ), was
derived from the name of Pallas , son of Evander, a
Greek who according to epic tradition settled on the
site of Rome centuries before its “real” founding.
The fate of Pallas constitutes a major motif in Vergil's
Aeneid .
One relatively unfamiliar hill in Rome, Monte
Testaccio , is a sizable, artificial eminence near the
Tiber south of the city, rising a hundred feet above
the surrounding level. This was the commercial
dock area in antiquity, and more recently the site of
the modern city's slaughterhouse, not much frequented
by tourists, although it is near the cemetery
that contains the grave of John Keats. Monte Testaccio
( Testaceus in Latin) means `hill of potsherds'--an
exact description of its makeup. For centuries it was
formed by the dumping of debris from the dock
area, mostly pieces of broken amphoras, which then
became compacted. Walking on its surface is an extraordinary
experience.
Colosseum is the popular name for the most famous
surviving ancient building of Rome. Its official
name was Flavian Amphitheater , after the family
name of its builder, the emperor Vespasian. The
name Colosseum , now usually taken to refer to its
size, originally referred to the fact that the amphitheater
was built adjacent to a huge statue (a colossus )
of the sun god that had been commissioned by
Nero, allegedly in his own likeness.
The name of one of the most favored places of
modern Rome, Piazza Navona , is a disguised form of
a word for the ancient structure whose site it occupies,
a stadium ( circus in Latin) built by the emperor
Domitian. Piazza Navona still preserves the exact
shape of that stadium, of which practically nothing
else is left. The stadium itself, and the kind of activity
that took place there, were called agon , a Greek
word which originally meant simply `competition,'
but which has given us our word `agony.' St. Agnes
suffered martyrdom at this stadium after her hair
grew with miraculous rapidity to cover the nakedness
by which her persecutors sought to humiliate
her. Consequently, the church that was later built
there was called “St. Agnes in Agone.” The phrase
in agone came to be corrupted to Navona , by way of
intermediate forms such as Nagone and Navone . Until
well into the present century, the official, if little
used, name of the piazza was Circo Agonale .
Piazza di Spagna , site of the Spanish Steps, is so
named because since the 17th century it has been
the location of the Spanish embassy to the Holy See.
The main street that leads to the Spanish Steps, despite
its present concentration of elegant and renowned
boutiques, has the most prosaic of names:
Via Condotti , after the aged conduits that serve the
nearby Trevi Fountain.
Many ecclesiastical buildings of Rome have
striking names. San Giovanni in Oleo stands near the
spot, just inside the ancient Porta Latina, where St.
John the Evangelist is said to have survived immersion
in boiling oil. The name of the church of Santa
Maria sopra Minerva recalls that it was built over a
temple of the pagan goddess Minerva. Santa Maria
in Cosmedin remains an etymological puzzle. This
church served Greek refugees in the 8th century,
and the designation in Cosmedin is usually assumed
to be connected with the Greek word kosmidion , diminutive
of kosmos , meaning `embellishment.'
The street names of Rome reflect both its long
history and the fanciful imagination of its people.
Via del Babuino , running north from Piazza di
Spagna, is named after an ancient fountain with a
statue of Silenus, the grotesque drunken follower of
Bacchus, which seemed to resemble a baboon. A
similar circumstance accounts for the strange name
of Via Santo Stefano del Cacco , which refers to a
statue of an animal-headed Egyptian deity discovered
in the remains of the nearby Temple of Isis.
The animal was identified as the kind of monkey
called in English a macaque , Italian macacco , here
colloquially truncated. Via di Ripetta `Embankment
Street' skirts the Tiber River as it passes the Ara
Pacis and the Mausoleum of Augustus. Here until
the present century there was a bustling landing
place for the boats that plied the Tiber, a popular
subject in old photographs and prints. Now a flood
control system has recessed the river below the level
of the adjacent streets, and the ripetta has disappeared
except in name. Via di Ripetta imperceptibly
merges into Via della Scrofa `Street of the Sow,'
named after another ancient sculpture that is still
preserved there. Just off Via della Scrofa is an old
tower called Torre della Scimmia . A votive lamp
permanently lit on this tower commemorates the miraculous
rescue of a baby girl from a scimmia `pet
monkey' that had carried her off to its top. Its principal
interest for many Americans, however, is that
this is Hilda's Tower, where the ethereal heroine of
Nathaniel Hawthorne's Marble Faun lived while she
studied painting in Rome.
Many street names in the historic center of
Rome recall how medieval artisans used to congregate
in specialized quarters: Via dei Giubbonari
`makers of coats,' Calderari `tinkers,' Pettinari `makers
of combs,' Coronari `rosary makers,' Balestrari
`crossbow makers,' and many others. The words in
this list are obsolete in contemporary Italian, but the
street names survive.
A Roman street that retains a picturesque name
is Via delle Botteghe Oscure `Street of Dark Shops.'
The widening of this street in the 1930s resulted not
only in the brightening (or disappearance) of the
shops, but also in the uncovering of important archaeological
remains, much to the inconvenience of
modern developers--an old story in Rome. The
street gave its name to the influential literary journal,
Botteghe Oscure , published there in the 1950s
by Marguerite Caetani, an American-born member
of the aristocratic Italian family whose ancestral palace
stands at the beginning of the street.
The single most prolific source of street names
in Rome is the Risorgimento, the 19th-century revolutionary
movement that unified Italy. Rome grew
phenomenally in the decades following the Risorgimento.
One result of this growth was an abundance
of new streets that needed names; the worthies of
the Risorgimento largely filled the bill. Its principal
heroes--King Vittorio Emanuele II, Garibaldi, Mazzini,
Cavour --are commemorated in the names of
the main streets and piazzas of virtually every city
and town in Italy, not least in Rome. Via Venti Settembre
`20th of September Street' illustrates the
Italian propensity for naming streets after historic
dates, in this case the date of the breach in the ancient
fortification wall of Rome, through which Italian
troops stormed the city to bring the Risorgimento
to an end. Via del Plebiscito, the street that
connects Piazza Venezia with Largo Argentina, now
almost totally surrendered to buses and taxis, was
named for the `plebiscite' held in 1870, shortly after
the events of the 20th of September, when the people
of Rome voted to join the rest of Italy, ending
the temporal power of the Church.
Via Veneto , site of the American Embassy and of
la dolce vita in general, was named for one of the
provinces of the newly unified Italy, as were other
streets nearby ( Via Toscana, Via Lombardia, Via
Campania, etc .), when what had been the gardens of
the Villa Ludovisi were urbanized almost exactly a
hundred years ago. Following World War I, Via
Veneto was renamed Via Vittoria Veneto , after a
town in Veneto that had been the scene of an Italian
battle of that war. (This town itself had been renamed
in 1866 in honor of King Vittorio Emanuele
II.) To this day, hardly anyone ever calls Via Vittorio
Veneto anything but Via Veneto.
Few of the street names that originated in the
Fascist era have survived it. The grandiose Via
dell'Impero that was rammed through the central archaeological
zone in the 1930s was named after the
short-lived Fascist “Empire” in Africa. It has been
renamed Via dei Fori Imperiali , some what ironically,
as the frenzied traffic on it is a serious blight to the
enjoyment of the remains of the ancient Imperial
Fora themselves. Proposals to demolish this street
and restore the unity of the whole archaeological
zone from the Capitoline Hill to the Colosseum are
often in the news.
Across the Tiber, Via della Conciliazione , which
cleared the approach to the Basilica of St. Peter from
centuries-old congestion, commemorates the `Reconciliation'
effected by the Lateran Treaty of 1929.
This regularized the relationship between the
Church and the Italian state, which had remained
unsettled during the years since the Risorgimento.
Just inside the southern part of the ancient wall
there is another street that has escaped renaming,
although it commemorates a Fascist victory in the
Italian-Ethiopian war. This is the exotic-sounding
Via Amba Aradam , named after a plateau in Ethiopia,
a battlefield in 1936.
In the southern part of Rome stands the rather
forlorn EUR complex of obsolescent modern buildings.
The initials, always pronounced as one Italian
word “ay-OOR”), stand for Esposizione Universale di
Roma , a world's fair that was to have been held in
1942 but yielded instead to World War II. One of
the buildings, visible from the highway that serves
Rome's airport, is a bizarre structure officially called
Palazzo della Civiltá del Lavoro. Its principal design
feature is the rounded openings that cover all four of
its exterior walls. The major Italian guidebook to
Rome soberly claims that this building has been
nicknamed Il Colosseo Quadrato , `The Square Colosseum.'
In fact, what most Romans really call it is Il
Palazzo di Groviera `The Swiss Cheese Palace.'
A scattering of names referring to more recent
Roman history can be found. At the base of the Aventine,
a postwar park has been named the Parco
della Resistenza dell'Otto Settembre , commemorating
the heroic action against the Nazis there on that
date in 1943 by the Italian partisans. Nearby, just
outside the ancient wall, the area in front of the railroad
station has been named Piazzale dei Partigiani .
Luigi Einaudi, the patriarch of postwar Italian politics,
President of the Republic from 1948 to 1955,
when he was an octogenarian, has the unusual honor
of a street named for him in the heart of the city,
near the central railway station. This had previously
been called Viale delle Terme, after the ruins of the
adjacent Baths of Diocletian, one corner of which
holds the present National Museum of Antiquities.
Finally, Americans who visit Rome should make
an excursion to Villa Borghese, a park just outside
the ancient wall near Via Veneto, where they will
find what used to be Viale dei Leoni `Street of the
Lions,' now officially Viale Fiorello Laguardia .
When Max Peterson writes [XVII,1] “...St.
Augustine...arrived in England bringing Christianity
and Latin...,” he may be correct about the
Latin, but Christianity beat Augustine there by a
couple of centuries. There were, for example, British
bishops at the Council of Arles, in 314. See The
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church , second
edition, 1984 repr., pp. 290ff., “The Church of England.”
The Scandalous Yiddish
Guide of the Census Bureau
Every language deserves respect and reverence.
Every language is the creative expression of
the genius of its people, the collective repository of
a nation's legends, traditions, and history, and a
mighty potentiator of its national and cultural continuity.
The Census Bureau publishes 32 foreign language
Guides, from (alphabetically) Arabic to Yiddish,
to assist residents unfamiliar with English in
answering the official 1990 U.S. Census Form. I
took one look at the Bureau's Yiddish Guide and my
eyes, four-score-and-four years old, glazed over, not
because of their age but because what they saw was
totally unreadable--a heap of pure gibberish. From
the very title of the Guide , to the first word, first
sentence, first paragraph--every rule of spelling,
grammar, and syntax has been violated beyond recognition.
The entire document represents a veritable
rain of error--nay, a torrent, a deluge of gross
mistakes, outrageous misspellings, and just plain and
simple ignorance.
To give the reader an approximate idea of what
a Yiddish speaker is confronted with, imagine a
question like “How many people live in this house?”
being translated as With pensil say on these line how
much parssonalitys residue in yuore abodiement .
Even this fails to convey in full the nonsense of the
Yiddish Guide because with patience and some educated
guessing one could decipher the meaning of
the above sentence. This, however, would be practically
impossible with the so-called Guide . No
amount of patient effort and guessing to reconstruct
a sentence would be of any avail because the Yiddish
in the Guide is garbled to the point of incoherence.
One is reminded of the assembly instructions
that used to come with products imported from Japan.
The English terms in those instructions were so
comically outlandish and the sentence structure so
awkward that they became a source of hilarity.
There is nothing hilarious or mirthful, however,
about the Yiddish Guide . To the very contrary: it
brings forth a deep sense of sadness because what
was supposed to be a serious attempt at facilitating
the Census count, a sort of “first aid” assistance in
answering the Census Form, looks like the work of a
child who took several pages from a Yiddish book,
cut them up with his plastic scissors into tiny pieces
of various shapes and sizes and then playfully pasted
them together.
How did such irresponsibility come about?
Why did the Census Bureau not call up the Library
of Congress for a referral to a responsible Yiddish
translator? Instead, I imagine, whoever was in
charge of foreign language translations asked around
casually during a coffee break: “Anyone here know
Yiddish?” And a chap piped up: “Well, my mother
and father spoke Yiddish when they didn't want me
and my sisters to understand what they were saying,
but my grandmother and my mother always spoke
Yiddish...”
The saying Traduttore traditore expresses the
idea that no matter how gifted a translator is, he can
never truly convey the subtle nuances and meanings
behind the original language, the many-layered associations
and allusions that the words in the original
connote. The Yiddish “translator” of the Census
Guide doesn't belong, of course, to the above class
of translators. While professional translators are
richly and deeply knowledgable in both languages,
the original language and the language they translate
into, the so-called translator of the Census Guide
is totally ignorant of the rudimentary rules of Yiddish,
not to mention its spirit. The end result of his
work therefore is tantamount to sabotage, albeit unintended,
since any native Yiddish speaker starting
to answer the questionnaire with the help of this
Guide would soon have to discard, in utter confusion,
both the Census Form and the Guide as well.
But this denigration alone would not make the
Yiddish Guide the travesty it is. What made it a travesty,
indeed a tragedy, is that thousands upon thousands
of Yiddish speakers, many of them elderly and
poor, remained uncounted, and thus have fallen
“between the cracks,” so to speak, with grave political,
social, and economic consequences.
[ Editor's Note : We shall send a copy of Census
publication D-60 (Yiddish) to anyone who requests
it and encloses a s.a.s.e.]
Third Barnhart Dictionary of New English
Two generations of the Barnhart family have
been intimately involved in dictionary-making, certainly
one of the most unusual family businesses one
could imagine. The tradition began with the influential
work of Clarence L. Barnhart, dean of American
lexicography, who at the age of 89 is still active in
the profession. C.L.B. had much to do with the application
of modern linguistic theory to lexicography;
the list of publications he has edited includes
such landmarks as the Dictionary of American English
(University of Chicago Press), the Thorndike-Barnhart
School Dictionaries series (Scott Foresman;
the top-selling school dictionaries in the U.S.), the
American College Dictionary (Random House), the
New Century Cyclopedia of Names (Appleton-Century-Crofts),
and the World Book Dictionary (little
known, sadly, but one of the best unabridged dictionaries
still being kept current). He also founded
and, with his son, David, still edits the Barnhart Dictionary
Companion [ BDC ], a periodical report on
new words that features the staple of Barnhart lexicography--full,
dated citations.
In addition to their work in the Dictionary Companion ,
well regarded by lexicographers and other
serious word people, the family Barnhart and their
colleagues have directed much effort over the years
to tracking and recording new English, and this latest
publication is another in that line. This Third
Barnhart Dictionary of New English [TBDNE] follows
on two others of similar purpose and style that appeared
in 1973 and 1980, respectively, published
by Harper & Row. The intent of the series is to record
“words and meanings not entered or fully explained
in standard dictionaries... a supplement to
current dictionaries of the English language” (from
the Preface). In this latest addition to the series
Robert K. Barnhart is listed first on the title page,
taking over his father's role in the previous books,
and, as before, they are joined by Sol Steinmetz.
The combined editorial staff for all three books includes
the names of no fewer than nine Barnharts.
TBDNE is an amalgamation and continuation,
with “many of the entries found in the two earlier
books of this series (both now out of print)...included
to provide a revised and expanded record of
new words and meanings introduced into English
during the past three decades” (Preface). Those
wishing to supplement their aging Webster's Third
New International (Merriam, 1961) and unwilling to
spend about thirty dollars more for the recent editions
of the Random House Unabridged or World
Book Dictionary would be very well served by the
TBDNE . It should be noted, however, that the
TBDNE , in including the work of its predecessors,
represents a departure from their approach. The
Second in 1980 was totally independent of the 1963
book: the second supplemented the first. The
TBDNE consolidates the best of the two earlier dictionaries,
with revisions, then adds some new entries.
It is intended to replace its predecessors, not
supplement them.
Each entry contains a definition (occasionally
two or more) followed by one or more lengthy,
dated citations, plus a date, often different, of the
earliest citation on file for each sense. The date is
often earlier than that of the citations given since
these were selected from the Barnhart files as most
illustrative of meaning and usage. Indeed, the definition
is often provided in the citation itself. Multiple
citations are arranged in an order of the editors'
choosing, not necessarily chronological. This approach
reflects editorial sifting of the evidence from
the citations and a subsequent presentation that best
befits clarity and sense development. Strict chronological
presentation of dated citations is at best a lexicographic
Procrustean bed, at worst very misleading.
Citations, being only the lexicographer's raw
data, need to be carefully reviewed, weighed, selected,
and presented if a dictionary entry is to record
the state of a word properly. Sound citation
analysis is, like good definition-writing, a rare gift,
and requires, besides diligence, broad experience
and a firm sense of the idiom of the language:
Sprachgefühl . Fortunately, the editors of TBDNE
have this in abundance, and the resulting excellence
is manifest on every page.
A careful estimate indicates that the TBDNE
contains about 9,000 headwords with an additional
2,000 or so other entry words; of these 11,000 or so
entries, some 2,300 (about 21%) are phrasal. The
estimate suggests something less than the entry
count of the Merriam-Webster 12,000 Words , which
is billed as a supplement to the Merriam Third , but
there the comparison ends. The TBDNE has well
over twice the information of the Merriam book,
which lacks citations. Citations are particularly important
in dictionaries of new words, not only in establishing
a dated record, but to furnish context and
thereby more clearly illustrate actual use--essential
for words that are by nature unfamiliar.
Other features include special notes on usage,
word formation, and cultural or historical background.
Pronunciations are given as necessary, using
an adaptation of the International Phonetic Alphabet
developed by the Barnharts for this series.
Etymologies are provided for a small proportion of
entries. Otherwise, the dictionary presents itself in
fairly standard, familiar fashion, with the sort of labeling
and cross-referencing that one expects in a
quality product. One feature of the earlier books in
the series has unfortunately not been kept in
TBDNE --the use of centered dots within headwords
to show syllabication points.
An analysis of the entries in two randomly selected
spans of the TBDNE suggests that the great
bulk of the entries are repeated, often with revision,
from the two earlier books, with less evidence of
new material than one might have hoped for. A randomly
chosen span of 50 full entries in the TBDNE ,
from pill to platinum , was compared against the
same alphabetic span in the 1963 and 1980 dictionaries:
1963 1980 1990
35 entries 28 entries 50 entries
The 50 entries of the TBDNE include 22 from
the 1963 book (13 were dropped) and 26 from the
1980 book (2 were dropped), with only two completely
new entries. The new items, pinstriper and
Planet X, are, not surprisingly, both drawn from the
BDC , which provided the actual citation for pinstriper
and the date of earliest occurrence for Planet
X. It seems likely that the increasingly common acronym
PIN , for personal identification number , issued
by banks as a unique identifier for customers who
use automatic teller machines (yes, ATM is in),
which was in BDC was passed over for TBDNE because
it appears as an entry in the Random House
Unabridged Second Edition (1987), though ATM is
an entry in all three.
To find such a low proportion of new entries
(4%), was unexpected, so another random span of
50, from go to grammaticality , was compared, with
the following result:
1963 1980 1990
22 entries 27 entries 50 entries
Of these 50 entries, 18 come from the 1963
book (4 dropped), all 27 were taken from the 1980,
and 5 new items were added: goldbug , golden parachute,
gold rush (new sense), golf ball (new sense),
and gomer . Two of the five are to be found in the
BDC , while entries for all appear in the World Book
Dictionary (1989 edition), also produced by the
Barnhart staff. So there was indeed a greater proportion
of new entries (10%) than in the span noted
first, but still a disappointingly small minority of the
whole.
Of the entries left out of the TBDNE that did
appear in the previous books, none was surprising.
Technical terms such as pinealectomy , planetology ,
and planktotrophic are of low frequency or have only
specialized use, so were understandably dropped in
compiling the TBDNE (indeed, it is more notable
that they were ever included at all). Entries for pipe
bomb , ( in the ) pipeline, pita , and placebo effect ,
plasma jet , and platform tennis , all in the 1963 book,
were doubtless dropped because they all are entered
in current general-language dictionaries, and
so are no longer required in the TBDNE, given its
stated intention. The dropping of goulash communism
(1968 citation; economic approach in thencommunist
Hungary emphasizing greater production
of consumer goods) and gramadan (1970 citation;
Hindi loanword applied to a Gandhian form of
land collectivization in India), both in the 1963 book
but not in TBDNE , reflects the fact that, in a living
language, citations require different analysis and
judgment after the perspective of time is added. It
may seem unfortunate to discard entries that, no
matter the frequency or currency of the term, are
part of the record of English, but such is necessary in
any commercial dictionary venture. At least it does
appear, based on the spans analyzed, that the discards
were judiciously chosen.
A comparison reading of full entries in the
TBDNE against the source entries from its predecessors
reveals the marks of close editing to incorporate
better citations and record earlier attestations. Also,
the citational style has been tightened, undoubtedly
to create space for additional entries. Where the
1963 and 1980 dictionaries cited author, article,
publication, and date (for a periodical), the same citation
in the TBDNE gives only publication and date.
The space saved allowed for amalgamation and new
entries; yet, anyone interested in more background
on a particular citation is provided with enough information
to track it down, assuming that a good library
is at hand.
I hesitate to quibble over a few items not found
in the TBDNE , since even these should cause no
great concern. A dictionary of neologisms owes
nearly everything to the citation files behind it, and
citation files are very much a product of accident,
constrained by budget. That the Random House Unabridged
(Second Edition, 1987) includes pimpmobile
and plain-vanilla probably means that the
Random House files had citations for these, the
Barnharts' not--or not enough. Given the immense
quantity of English in use worldwide, it is simply
impossible for any single citation-gathering force to
see, much less collect, all that should be in the file.
Merriam's 12,000 Words has entries for Pinteresque,
pistou , and place value , again a reflection of what the
vast Merriam files have yielded up. Still, none of the
new-words dictionaries I checked, including the
Longman Register of New Words (edited by John
Ayto; Longman, 1989) and the Facts on File Dictionary
of New Words (edited by LeMay, Lerner and
Taylor; Facts on File, 1988) had an entry for pixelization
`the appearance of pixels (dots that make up
a computer-screen image) in a computer graphic, a
mark of lower resolution.' An entry for it must await
citations entering the files, assuming the word
proves its usefulness to users of English over time.
It is a bit dissatisfying to find fewer new entries
in the TBDNE than one might have expected. Commercial
constraints are the likely explanation for
this, not, I strongly suspect, lack of new words and
senses in the ever-burgeoning English lexicon. But
we should not judge too harshly on the basis of two
narrow spans covering only about 1% of the entries.
While it can truly be said that the TBDNE shows
more of the solid foundation of its predecessors than
it does of newly laid work, this is hardly negative
criticism. The 1963 and 1980 books are both fine
dictionaries, and a book that combines the best of
those, carefully re-edited, with some solid, new lexicography
based on the BDC , the World Book Dictionary ,
and the substantial Barnhart files, must be a
high-quality dictionary. It is.
Frank R. Abate
I'd like to add a word to Harry Cohen's delightful
list in “Jingo Lingo” [XVI, 4]. The French words
for junkie are toxoman and morphinman , neither of
which merits official use.
I must take issue with your quick dismissal of
Mr. Saussy's claim that his father earned his bachelor's
degree “at the behest of the Marine Corps”
[XVI, 4]. To the extent that written orders constitute
military commands, the U.S. Navy and Marine
Corps do indeed issue “behests” for academic degrees.
In the past, the Marine Corps has had programs
similar to the Navy's College Degree Program
(CDP) and Navy Enlisted Scientific Education Program
(NESEP). Moreover, at any given time there
are many Marine Corps officers enrolled in graduate
study programs at the Naval Postgraduate School
(NPS), in Monterey, California. They arrive at NPS
with orders in hand and usually complete degree requirements
within two years--at the behest of the
Marine Corps.
To Abbrev. or Not to Abbreviate
There is a linguistic process in the evolution of
our vocabulary that is not functioning with a
high rate of efficiency. Not that the language has
ever been highly logical or ever should be, but what
set out on a bon voyage is gradually abandoning ship
and heading back to shore. What was to have happened
simply is not always happening.
In the world of modern communication, it is evident
that it is often necessary to speed up the sending
of messages. With the written language, this is
orthographically facilitated by the various processes
of word shortening--acronyms ( ZIP for Zone Improvement
Plan ), contractions ( won't for will not ),
clipped words ( deli for delicatessen ) and abbreviations
( lb. for pound ). However, the time- and space-saving
act of abbreviating is not always working with
the efficiency that was originally intended. A few
examples will vividly illustrate this puzzling discrepancy.
When we find ourselves with a long word or
phrase on our hands, we would normally expect to
find an abbreviation to come to the rescue. In time,
that generally happens and, with few communication
difficulties, everything lives happily after. The
expression, master of the ceremonies , is earliest
found in 1662. It is more than a hundred years later
before an efficient abbreviation for it is found. In
1790 M.C. finally arrives in print to reduce the writing
wordload by 300 percent. Supposedly, everything
is firmly set. For almost one and one half centuries,
M.C. does the job it was called upon to do. In
1933, however, some writer mysteriously decides
that a new word is needed to represent the pronunciation
of the abbreviation. Emcee is thus born, no
matter that this represents an increase from two letters
to five, a bulging 125% growth. Granted, emcee
is still more efficient than master of ceremonies , but
the need for spelling out the sound of letters seems
redundant, superfluous, and therefore useless.
Nevertheless, the practice of changing from
term to abbreviation to phonetic spelling of the abbreviation
is an old and continuing oddity in English.
In World War II, the need for a general-purpose vehicle
was satisfied with the development of a means
of transportation referred to by the government
with astonishing directness and candor as a general-purpose
vehicle . The army, quick to abbreviate everything,
began to refer to the vehicle as a g.p., but
by 1941 g.p. had given way to the longer jeep .
Vice president (with no capitals is first found in
1574, and Vice President , referring to his USA nibs,
is found in 1787. Sometime later VP shortened the
term by 250%, but by 1949 veep , although abhorred
by many, was applied affectionately to Alben Barclay
and became part of the written and spoken
vocabulary.
Junior varsity is found in 1949, referring to the
secondary team of an American school or university.
The date for the first use of J.V. is unsure, but the
date for jayvee , 1937, would seem to show a lack of
conclusive evidence since junior varsity must obviously
have preceded jayvee .
Disc jockey is found in 1941, deejay in 1949,
indicating that D.J. might have been in between.
Another inconsistency is to be found in the process
of knockout , the boxing term and later the metaphoric
term referring to anything that amazes or
shocks. Knockout is first recorded in 1887, and logically
following is K.O. in 1926, but the first appearance
of kayo is cited in 1923.
Not to rehash the OK controversy, but oll korrect
is first found in 1839 with OK also listed in that
same year. Following reasonable suit, okeh appears
in 1919, and okay is charted in 1929.
One segment of the armed forces is the Construction
Batallion, which was quickly abbreviated
to C.B. In 1942 this group came to be known as the
Seabees , sporting uniforms with an appropriate insigne
of a seafaring bee.
One of the latest words to enter the Abbreviation
Cycle of Redundancy Race is Missouri . The
“Show-Me” state gained statehood in 1821. It is not
clear when the inept Mo. became the official abbreviation.
However it is, the Postal Service saw fit to
continue the curse with MO. The final stage is now
evident in the state's motto regarding drugs: “MO
SAYS NO TO DRUGS,” where MO is obviously to be
rhymed with NO.
What are the reasons for the apparent senselessness
in the preceding examples? It must first be remembered
that English is not highly reliant on the
rules of logic. Prescriptive dictionaries are becoming
fewer; descriptive dictionaries are gaining in
popularity. Aside from generalizations, however,
the abbreviations considered here do present some
reason for their madness. Mo rhyming with no certainly
makes the slogan easy to remember. Jeep and
veep , each containing only one syllable, are easier to
pronounce than their ancestral abbreviations. Emcee
probably radiates a more euphemistic aura of
dignity than M.C. Although there seems to be no
reason for jayvee , it must be noted that the date
given for the first appearance of a word is actually a
record of when it was first found in print, and earlier
oral use could not distinguish J. V. from jayvee . The
word was no doubt used orally much earlier.
The problem with abbreviations as presented
here again illustrates that people demand that language
work the way they want to make it work.
Overall, the abbreviating process is alive and doing
exceptionally well.
To supplement E. T. Henry's “Nifty Nomenclature”
[XVI,4], my English wife (nee Hume ) from
Beckenham offers the intelligence that when she
was a child, her doctor's name was Death (pronounced
“DEETH”), her dentist's name was Screech,
her schoolteacher's name was Kenshitt , and the local
pastor was Reverend Long who married a Miss
Shorter.
In “The Language of the Law” [XVII,1], one
phrase ran off the rails:
customs that runneth not to the contrary.
Perhaps the writer was not serious, because he
had a plural subject with a singular verb, runneth , in
the relative clause. What “runneth not to the contrary”
is memory, rather than custom. A better use
of the phrase would be:
Droit du seigneur has been the custom for so long
that the mind of man runneth not to the contrary.
The Sounds of Inglish
Bernard Shaw's Professor Henry Higgins liked to
vent his ire on his fellow countrymen for “the
cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.” What
his views were on foreigners who spoke the language
less than perfectly we shall never know. But I
imagine those views wouldn't have been complimentary
either, because many of his real-life counterparts,
devout worshipers of the Queen's English,
have expressed varying degrees of horror on the
subject.
One would have thought that a little gratitude
would be in order, gratitude for living in a world
that largely speaks their language, however differently.
Assume for a moment that this were not the
case. How would the predominantly monoglot
Britons then cope?
Now imagine for a moment that you are seated
on the verandah of a bungalow in India. The impending
monsoon has darkened the skies, the breeze
is rustling the chintz curtains and the calico tablecloth.
Is a typhoon on its way? A motley crowd is
hurrying by--workers in dungarees; a yogi with his
followers; a noblewoman in purdah in palanquin; a
group of nautch girls, attractive in their aniline-dyed
dresses and bright bandanas, their bangles jingling
and their long, shampooed hair streaming in the
breeze; a sepoy all smart in khaki on his horse, his
jodhpurs trim and neat; a scholarly pundit; a mahout
on his elephant, ambling like a juggernaut. A pariah
dog barks at a bandicoot (or is it a mongoose?) in the
paddy fields while mynahs twitter in the adjoining
jungle. Fishermen secure their catamarans and dinghies
to the pier with thick coir ropes. There's
have a dekko at. Everything is so different from
good old Blighty...
Thirty-five words in the preceding paragraph
are derived from Indian languages and are listed in
standard English dictionaries as acceptable English
words. Some of them strike us immediately as exotic
but others (shampoo, for instance) are in such common
use that people are often astonished to learn
that they have a foreign origin. The Empire carried
the English language to distant climes. These lands
were poles apart from England in every possible
way. There simply were no words in the English
language to describe many local features and the local
way of life. New words, phrases, and idioms had
to be coined--out of necessity. What better than to
borrow words and expressions from local languages
and anglicize them?
English, in turn, made its impact on Indian languages
in two ways: crossbreeding with Indian
words to produce unique amalgamations; and lending
words and expressions to Indian languages. As a
result, we now have hybrid words like gymkhana
and memsahib . Gymkhana , a `club for members to
socialize and partake in sports and recreation,' is a
mixture of the Hindi gendkhana (meaning `ball
house') and the English gymnasium . Memsahib ,
meaning `European or white lady,' stems from sahib ,
an Indian title of respect often accorded to white
men, and mem , a corruption of Madam .
So too, words like shirt, bus, paper, fan, road ,
and light have become common in everyday vernacular
speech in India. Some pronunciations have
been Indianized. Pen is at times pronounced “penai”
in South India, and when somebody speaks of
krishnoil , he means kerosene oil. Expressions like
the Tamil Then-nilavu , which is a literal translation
of `honey' and `moon' and means `honeymoon,' have
also resulted.
The permutations do not end there. Indians
bring nuances from their own languages into English.
This has resulted in a variant of English known
as Inglish ( Indian English). Inglish differs from English
in five ways: words, expressions, grammar, pronunciation
and rhythm. Inglish sentences are peppered
with Indian words. Yaar or Da (meaning
`chum' or `buddy'), often punctuate Inglish speech.
Maha , meaning `great,' is another such word; an
irate employer chastises his `maha-lazy” workers, an
enamoured youth woos his “maha-beautiful” sweetheart.
When the police control unruly mobs by
wielding wooden batons (lathi in Hindi), they make
a “lathi-charge.” When you are introduced to some-body's
“co-brother,” you infer that he is the gentleman's
wife's sister's husband.
Indian patterns of grammer are also adopted in
Inglish speech. “Will you come?” changes to “You
will come?” and “Why has she done this?” to “What
for she has done this?” because that's the right way
to structure those sentences grammatically in the
original Indian languages. Somebody answering the
telephone might be expected to say, “This is
Krishnaswami speaking.” Instead, you get a booming,”
“I speaking Krishnaswami.”
The lilting rhythms and pronunciations of each
regional Indian language are characteristic of the Inglish
spoken there. Thus, we have Inglish dialects
such as Hinglish, Benglish, Punglish, Tamglish,
Malayanglish, and so forth. A person's Inglish often
tells you which region of India he or she hails from.
“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” sung by a North Indian
could have the le in twinkle pronounced “lay.”
The man from Andhra Pradesh might come up with
the Telugu flavored Twinkulu Twinkulu Littlu Staru ,
while from Kerala come the deeply resonant Malayalam
twangs of Dwingle Dwingle Liddle Sdar .”
And Inglish speech is not complete without
nodding of the head, some gesticulation, and an expressive
face.
This may be more than sufficient, perhaps, to
drive the literary purists to suicide. But before they
plunge the knife in, let them consider the English
spoken in countries around the world--China, the
Caribbean, the South American countries, and especially
the United States of America. A majority of
people speak English today as it should not be spoken
according to purists.
Languages that rigidly hold on to their purity
soon suffocate themselves. Those that adapt and
change (and yes, get “corrupted” once in a while)
survive and thrive. It is this quality to adapt that
gives English its virility. Its status as the most widely
spoken language in the world will take some challenging.
Speakers of English, this is reason enough
to rejoice. Listen with an attentive ear to the sounds
of Inglish and the Englishes of other lands. The experience
can be maha-fascinating.
The Naming of Poisons
“It must be tough being a bartender,” customers
would sometimes say to me, in the days
when I was practising the trade. “How can you
ever remember all those different drink recipes?” It
is not really all that hard, I would explain to them.
Drinks are a lot like popular songs. First, there are
the standards , like the Martini and the Screwdriver
and the Bloody Mary . These are to bartender what
White Christmas and My Way are to a lounge singer.
There are only 20 or 30 of them, and they account
for 90 percent of all cocktail orders.
Then there are the current hits , things like the
Melonball and the Kamikaze . These are comparable
to this season's hit songs. If you don't know how to
make one of them, someone can usually tell you--
the customer who ordered it, a regular sitting at the
end of the bar, or another bartender. After this happens
a few times the drink gets pounded into your
head, like the latest Bruce Springsteen on the juke
box.
Finally, there are the oldies-but-goodies . If you
don't know these, you can look them up in one of
the bartending reference books behind the bar.
There is also--with drinks as well as with
songs--a phenomenally large number of also-rans.
One can look through the promotional booklets
given out by the liquor companies and the ads in
magazines like Playboy to find countless unlikely
sounding recipes concocted by marketing departments
in hopes of selling more of their products.
One rarely hears a “real” person order one of these
drinks.
If one adds to these flops the unpublicized creations
of individual bars and bartenders and customers,
it is apparent that in our culture there is an
immense and continual outpouring of mixologic creativity.
Only the tiniest fraction of this output, however,
actually achieves the first level of popular acceptance,
and becomes a current hit . Having
reached that level, it is almost as difficult to achieve
the next one and become a standard , a drink that
will still be popular by the time the next generation
of current hits comes along.
I occasionally wondered why, out of the hundreds
of candidates available, a certain few drinks
had managed to achieve favor with the popular
taste. It was usually not , as one might have supposed,
because a newly discovered combination of
ingredients had resulted in some completely unique
new flavor. An Alabama Slammer , for instance, is
made from sweetish liquors and fruit juice. As far as
flavor goes, it offers nothing to the palate that could
not as easily be provided by, say, a Singapore Sling .
But, for young Americans of certain backgrounds,
the Alabama Slammer is now chic, and the Singapore
Sling is not.
The liquor industry sometimes does come up
with new and different flavors. During the period
when I was tending bar, for instance, a honeydewmelon-flavored
liqueur called Midori, a product of
the Japanese distiller Suntory, became very popular.
But one might still ask why certain Midori-based
drinks, such as the Melonball and the Pearl Harbor ,
became widely accepted, while others-- The Green
Goddess, Early Spring in Kyoto --languished in the
pages of Suntory's promotional literature. I have
concluded that by far the most important factor in
the success of a new drink is its name .
The bar where I used to work was located in the
train station in New London, Connecticut. This is a
town that has both a large naval base and a private
co-educational college, and I waited on great numbers
of people in their early to mid twenties. This is
the group that, more than any other, serves as the
breeding ground for new drinks. Very often I would
take an order for a drink that was just coming into
popularity, and then, when I served the drink, I
would find out that the customer had expected
something different. Frequently that was because
the customer came from a region of the country
where a different set of ingredients went by the
same name. What had happened was that the recipe
had become garbled as it traveled across the country
by oral transmission from customer to bartender,
and bartender to bartender. Yet the name had survived.
Unlike most products, which may be slipped
across a counter (over or under) in silence, drinks
are usually ordered out loud. Young people, when
ordering a drink, like to give an indication, to themselves
and to others, that they are tough, or sexy, or
funny. They also have a strong tendency to imitate
their peers and to order what they hear other order.
During the time that I was working as a bartender
(1977-1984), the new drinks that became
popular almost invariably contained references in
their names to images from the following categories:
1) pleasant taste; 2) destruction or self-destruction;
3) irreverence; 4) sexual innuendo.
1) Pleasant Taste : Many young people do not
like the taste of liquor in its raw state. They often
order a drink with a name that seems to promise a
sweet or non-alcoholic taste. “A Creamsicle !? That
sounds good! I think I'll try one of those!” In all of
the cases below, the name actually does reflect, to
some extent, the taste of the drink.
MELONBALL CREAMSICLE
1 ounce Midori 1 ounce vodka
1 ounce vodka 1 ounce Triple Sec
Fill with orange juice. Fill with half milk, half
Glass: Collins, with ice orange juice; shake.
Glass: Collins, with ice
LONG ISLAND ICED TEA CALIFORNIA ROOT BEER
½ ounce vodka 1 ounce Galliano
½ ounce rum 1 ounce coffee liqueur
½ ounce gin Fill with cola.
½ ounce Triple Sec Glass: Collins, with ice
½ ounce tequila (A California Root Beer Float
Fill with lemon mix, add Float is the same drink
squirt of cola. with the addition of a
Glass: Collins, with ice splash of milk.)
HAWAIIAN PUNCH Splash of grenadine
1 ounce sloe gin Fill with half orange
¾ ounce Southern juice, half
Comfort pineapple juice.
¾ ounce Amaretto Glass: Collins, with ice
2) Destruction or Self-Destruction : It is not always
clear which of these is referred to in the name
of a drink. When someone orders a Cherry Bomb ,
for instance, is he saying, symbolically, that he is
about to drop a small explosive charge into his nervous
system? Or is he saying that he is explosive?
Perhaps it is a little of each. There are many drinks
in this category, as one might expect, since so many
of the euphemisms for drunk (smashed, bombed , etc.)
etc.) also refer to destruction:
KAMIKAZE BLEEDING BRAIN
1 ounce vodka Fill a shot glass with half
1 ounce Triple Sec peppermint schnapps,
Few drops Rose's Lime half Irish cream liqueur,
Juice and add a few drops of
Glass: rocks glass, with grenadine. The resulting
ice curdled mess looks
like its name.
ALABAMA SLAMMER
1 ounce Southern CHERRY BOMB
Comfort 1 ½ ounce cherry
1 ounce sloe gin brandy
Fill with orange juice. Fill with beer
Glass: Collins, with ice Glass: beer mug
B-52
1 part Tia Maria Float Irish cream on Tia
1 part Irish cream Maria, and Grand
liqueur Marier on Irish Cream
1 part Grand Marnier Glass: cordial pony
3) Irreverence: Sometimes these categories
overlap a good deal. The Colorado Motherfucker
could also be placed in the next category, but I think
the name is intended more for shock than anything
else. It is a way of saying, “I am an outlaw, a mountain
man!” As one might expect, it tastes like a syrupy
milk shake.
COLORADO MOTHER- MUDSLIDE
FUCKER ¾ ounce vodka
1 ounce tequila ¾ ounce coffee liqueur
1 ounce coffee liqueur ¾ ounce Irish cream
Fill with milk; shake; liqueur
add splash of cola. Glass: rocks glass, with
Glass: Collins, with ice ice
PURPLE JESUS (This drink became pop-
½ ounce vodka ular after a series of data-
Graps juice to fill strophic mudslides hit
Glass: highball, with ice the california coast.)
4) Sexual Innuendo : Leafing through old bartending
manuals, one comes across things like the
Between-the-Sheets cocktail, so there is nothing radically
new about this category. But in recent times
the references are increasingly blunt. Much of the
appeal of these drinks lies in ordering them in such a
ways as to playfully “gross out” the bartender. It is
hard to imagine someone buying the ingredients for
an Orgasm at a liquor store and then going home and
mixing up a few to drink while reading mysteries in
bed. The idea is to go into the local bar and say,
“Hey, Marybeth, can you give me an Orgasm? I
haven't had a good Orgasm for a long time! HA!
“It's no wonder,” deadpans Marybeth, mixing
his drink.
ORGASM SLOE SCREW
¾ ounces vodka 1 ½ ounces sloe gine
¾ ounce coffee liqueur Orange juice to fill
¾ ounce amaretto Glass: highball, with ice
Fill with milk; shake. (A Screwdriver made
Glass: Collins with ice with sole gin instead of
SOLE COMFORTABLE vodka.)
SCREW SOLE COMFORTABLE
1 ounce sloe gin SCREW AGAINST
1 ounce Southern THE WALL
Comfort 1 ounce sloe gin
Orange juice to fill 1 ounce Southern
Glass: Collins, with ice Comfort
(A Sole Screw with the Orange juice to fill
addition of Southern ½ ounce Galliano floated
Comfort.) on top
SLIPPERY NIPPLE Glass: Collins, with ice
¾ ounce amaretto (The logic of this is that a
¾ ounce Irish cream Screwdriver with Galliano
liqueur floated on top is
¾ ounce ouzo known as a Harvey
Glass: Martini Wallbanger. Thus a
Garnish: skewer a Maraschino Comfortable Screw with
cherry with a Galliano floated on top
toothpick, and lay the becomes a Sole Comfortable
toothpick across the rim Screw Against the
of the glass so that the Wall. In bars it is rarely
cherry sits in the center ordered but much discussed.)
of the drink.
“Whereas sexologists have previously asked whether
the female gentilia resemble those of men, Eve's Secret
suggests that men's sexual organs may be derived from
those of women.” [From a Paladin/Grafton book advertisement
in The Guardian , n.d., . Submitted by ]
“Each of the four rings were positioned inside each
other.” [From an article on laser capability in Job Shop
Technology , . Submitted by
]
“State of Washington charges for certified birth,
death, marriage or disillusion....” [From Connecticut
Society of Genealogists Newsletter, . Submitted by ]
There is no doubt that family names often provide
a source of amusement, and some well-known
place names persist in their references to things and
activities otherwise rarely broached in polite conversation--you
know, those places in Pennsylvania.
Dr. Frank R. Abate, who has been conducting research
for a comprehensive place-name catalogue,
has sent us a listing of some interesting names in the
U.S. that raises some questions. For instance, why
is there a Why , Arizona, and a Whynot , Mississippi?
There is a Due West in Tennessee and an East Due
West in both Tennessee and South Carolina. Tennessee
also has a Yell , which is presumably connected
with Loud Township , Michigan. Not far from Koko
and Nankipoo in Tennessee is Yum Yum , which has its
own associations with Lick Fork , Virginia, Cheesequake ,
New Jersey, Shoofly (the pie, not the police
informer), North Carolina, Goodfood and Hot Coffee ,
Mississippi, Nodine , Minnesota, Cucumber , West Virginia,
Gnaw Bone , Indiana, Sugartit , Kentucky, Teaticket ,
Massachusetts, and, possibly, Fruita , Utah. If
Shoffly is not a kind of pie, it might go better with
Roaches , Illinois, Bugtown , Indiana, Mosquitoville ,
Vermont, Bugscuffle , Tennessee, or Big Tussle ,
Texas, where the insects must be truly humongous.
People who live in Dinkytown and Nebish , Minnesota,
Embarrass , Minnesota and Wisconsin, or in
Wartburg , Tennessee, ought to consider twinning
with Braggadocio , Missouri, and O.K ., Kentucky.
When the inhabitants of certain places are asked
where they come from, do they tell the truth (or
only if they come from Truth or Consequences)? Will
they admit to coming from Ding Dong , Texas, Unthanks ,
Virginia, Brainy Boro , New Jersey, Mudsock ,
Ohio, Jackass Flats , Nevada, Wahoo , Nebraska,
Funkley , Minnesota, Funkstown , Maryland Jerk Tail ,
Missouri, Zook Spur , Iowa, or Crapo , Maryland?
“Sonny, Ah'm a ding-dong daddy from Ding Dong,
Texas, 'n', consarn ya, Ah'll plug any varmint who
smiles.” Should we introduce the folks in Tightwad ,
Missouri, to those in Hard Cash , Mississippi, and
Greenbackville , Virginia? Notress , Texas speaks for
itself. Do any Republicans live in Democrat , Texas?
What can be said about the condition of denizens of
Flipping , West Virginia, and Looneyville , Texas?
If you find any Peculiar (Missouri) names or
ones that comes as a Surprise (Nebraska), just Jot 'Em
Down (Texas) Safely (Tennessee)--unless, of course,
they are Errata (Mississippi).
“Joseph L. Brechner Imminent Scholar of Journalism,
University of Florida.” [The title under the signature on a
letter to members of the Association for Education in Journalism
and Mass Communications, . Submitted
by ]
Book of Literary Lists
First published in Britain by Sidgwick & Jackson
in 1985, this is quite an uneven work, entries running
from “Arnold Bennett's choice of the twelve
finest novels in the world” (which includes Torrents
of Spring, Virgin Soil, On the Eve , and nine others, all
Russian), to a quotation from Gershon Legman,
“Murder is a crime. Describing murder is not. Sex
is not a crime. Describing sex is.”, to “Seventh century
The Venerable Bede translated St John's Gospel
into Anglo-Saxon.” There are many interesting and
amusing anecdotes and a fairly good index.
Grammar
A concise, explanatory guide to the complex set
of relations that link the sounds of language, or its
written symbols, with the message they have to convey.--From
the cover.
The first edition (1971) was evidently successful,
prompting this updated version. Starts with Alice/Humpty
Dumpty quotation. Well-written but
not overly simplified presentation. Good to read,
but sparse Index and brevity preclude its use as a
reference grammar.
Dictionary of Pseudonyms and Their Origins,
with Stories of Name Changes
Originally published in 1981 by Routledge as
Naming Names, Stories of Pseudonyms and Name
Changes, with a Who's Who , the author's Introduction
warrants this new edition to be “more readable,
more comprehensive and more orderly” in addition
to being updated. After 67 pages of well-written,
informative essays about names and pseudonyms,
each pseudonym is listed in alphabetical order
with the real name following, some biographical
data, information about the name change and, where
appropriate, about the circumstances under which
the change was made. ( Clauréne duGran , alas, was
omitted.) There follow three short appendices, including
one that lists celebrities who did not change
their names (e.g., Katharine Hepburn, Lena Horne,
Clint Eastwood, and Nelson Eddy). But wasn't Adolf
Hitler's real name Schicklgruber? ; that's what my
RHD has. In any event, anyone interested in language
ought to have all of Adrian Room's books in
his library.
Can you Find It?
This might (otherwise) be a fine piece of work,
but I happened to open it to the question, “The
slang expression `knothead' was first used in what
popular work of American literature?”.... “Need
more clues? See pages 117-118,” whither my fingers
scurried. Page 117 has a cartoon with a caption
showing the word nerd . Page 118 contain a quotation
from The Comedians , by Graham Greene, “His
slang ... was always a little out of date as though he
had studied a dictionary of popular usage, but not in
the latest edition,” the following dialogue, “A.
Don't be a knothead. Words are defined in word
dictionaries. Slang words are defined in slang dictionaries.
B. Phooey,” and, “Still can't find the answer?
See page 161,” whither we skedaddled to find
this execrable piece of misinformation: “The word
`knothead' was first used by Max Shulman in his Collection
of Campus Stories: The Many Loves of Dobie
Gillis... , p. 61. To quote: `Look at Petey--a
knothead...' ” For those who have not remained
awake during class, I must repeat the fact that when
a dictionary, whether it be the OED, Dictionary of
American Slang (the source of this citation), or any
other work uses quotations it simply lists the quotation
as the earliest printed evidence found of the use
of a word: that does NOT mean that the author of the
cited work made up the word. Just think how many
words must have been coined by writers whose
works are the only ones extant from early periods of
the language: people who misuse citation dictionaries
must think that Richard Rolle of Hampole, Holinshed,
Chaucer, Shakespeare, and a handful of other
geniuses sat down one day and invented the English
language, making up the words as they went along.
This book has a lot of cartoons and very few words.
Its cover promises the reader will be able to answer
questions like “Why did Whoopi Goldberg once
work at a mortuary, and what did she do there?” and
“How many paintings did Van Gogh actually sell
during his lifetime?” If you regard life as a trivial
pursuit, then knowing the answers to those might be
important to you. I had best not dwell on the revelation
that Mr. McCutcheon was Nebraska's Teacher
of the Year in 1985.
Words & C
Born 1901, John Flagg Gummere received a
Ph.D. in Indo-European languages from the University
of Pennsylvania in 1933; he died around 1988
--the date is not given in the brief biography provided
by John Francis Marion, an old friend. Gummere
was headmaster of Penn Charter School for
twenty-seven years, later taught classics and humanities
at Haverford College. We were--how to put
it?--distantly in touch with each other: though we
had never met, we knew some of the same people
and knew of each other. We corresponded occasionally
(in connection with VERBATIM, which he read
and, I think, enjoyed), and his warmth came through
in his letters. This book is an attractive and friendly
collection of his short pieces on language, written
with the authority of Gummere's scholarship and utterly
lacking in pedanticism. I do not know how
many copies were printed or how much they cost,
but I urge you to inquire and get two copies if you
can, one to keep and one to give to someone else
who loves language.
Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotable
Definitions
A few years ago, we published Definitive Quotations ,
by the late John Ferguson, a (very) small book
that contains entries like, “boy: A noise with dirt on
it.” Although Brussell's book does not consist entirely
of definitions (unless the genre be very loosely
defined), it comes close enough, so if you like these
things by the thousands instead of by the score, then
buy it. The boy definition is in it, but I could not find
one of my favorites (from DQ ), “ penicillin: just the
thing to give someone who has every thing.”
American Given Names
As all readers probably know, Laurence or Lawrence
sprang in medieval use from the name of the
Roman saint who was martyred by being broiled on
a gridiron in 258. The ancient Roman town of
Laurentium derived its name from the laurel or bay
tree, which presumably grew there. As VERBATIM is
currently published from Laurel Heights, the snake
has swallowed its tail. In any event, this book is well
known to all who are familiar with onomastic literature,
as, indeed, are other works by George Stewart,
American Place-Names and Names on the Globe (reviewed
in VERBATIM by W.F.H. Nicolaisen [II,4]).
The first 40 or so pages are devoted to an excellent
essay, titled “Historical Sketch.” Those who are interested
in given names or in onmastics in general
would do well to start here, then progress to the
other books by Stewart and by Leslie Dunkling. We
have a few copies left of House Names which we shall
sent to any North Americans who send in a request
accompanied by $1 to cover our costs.
Appropriate Word
It seems unnecessary, when we have available
terms like informal, colloquial, formal, nonstandard,
literary, poetic , and even conversational (though I
have never seen the last used), to come up with still
another set of labels, but Jules Hook, the author of a
number of responsible and useful works dealing with
English, feels that FF and SWE (for `family and
friends' and `standard written English,' respectively)
tell the user something that he might not already
know or feel about usages of borderline words. Certainly,
there was enough confusion about colloquial
to move lexicographers a few decades ago to drop it
in favor of informal ; but I used colloquial in a book I
recently completed on the grounds that informal
seemed to be getting contaminated. These terms
fluctuate. It is a comfort to know that if my book still
merits reprinting some decades hence, as it is in
machine-readable form, the publishers need only
write a short program indicating that informal be
substituted for all occurrences of colloquial and, like
magic, the switch will be effected. Hook goes on at
some expressive length on the subject of FF and SWE
and makes good sense, particularly when he emphasizes
the ways in which language changes, so that
the words classed taboo or formal in one generation
might very well change places. Of course, the biggest
problem with books of this sort is that the most
they can expect to accomplish is to help people refine
their use of the language: those whom we think
of as needing the greatest amount of help are usually
unaware of the fact; for them, looking up a doubtful
usage in a book like Hook's (or anyone else's, or
even a dictionary) would be unthinkable. Thus, the
greatest service such a book could render is virtually
aborted by definition.
Depending on the degree of refinement of
which the user is aware, that holds true for professionals
as well. The other day, Reid Collins, a news
presenter on CNN, used the expression the wheres
and the whyfors , which, as far as I know, constitutes
a fractured idiom in the category of I could care less .
Hook has an entry for A.D./B.C. that comments on
the placement of A.D. before a year and of B.C. after
a year; there are “professional” editors who are unaware
of that, so how will they know to look up the
style in The Appropriate Word or any other style or
usage book? Hook is more liberal than I: for instance,
I cannot bring myself to condone spelling
any more as one word in any context. I do not deny
the fact that it does not appear as one word, but if it
is going to appear that way in anything I have written
it will be after I am dead (and if this carping
keeps up, there will soon be a contract out on me).
For one thing, I have not noted any change in the
pronunciation of the compounded “anymore”--it
is pronounced as if it were two words (in contrast to
anybody, anything, anyhow, anywhere , etc.)--and I
see no justification for spelling it as a solid word. In
short, I do not agree with Hook in all matters, regardless
of the respect I have for his judgment and
the quality of his writing. I have not done a careful
comparison among the various usage/style manuals
to see what Hook might have that others do not, but
I get the feeling that his work is very much up to
date. If you write and wish to corroborate the style
of what you have written, you will probably want as
many books of this kind as you can lay your hands
on, and it would definitely be a good idea to acquire
this one.
Laurence Urdang
Appositional Elegance
A Brief Exposition
It has been a commonplace of language studies to
explore signs and use them to elucidate the phenomena
of elevation and degradation in the language.
One can readily assess the relative status of
establishments that refer to themselves as Eats,
Diner , or Restaurant . One can also assume that in
the United States a pub is at least one step above a
bar , although a saloon may be a par with a pub
since it connotes by-gone as opposed to a British
(and therefore old-world) elegance.
Within the past five or six years, however, I
have observed that elegance has come to be a matter
of phase rather than diction. The White House Inn ,
for example, has become The White House a Country
Inn . Note there is no punctuation in the phrase
nor a capital letter on the second article, and it is the
second article that appears to be a key. (I should
note that all examples come from establishments in
and around the more “elegant” resorts of Vermont
and New Hampshire, although I have witnessed the
phenomenon in many parts of parts of the country).
The article in the second half of the phrase,
both makes the phrase appositional and indicates the
upgrading of the referent. One example is Meredith
Station a Restaurant a Grill a Niteclub; this location
would appear to give the establishment a greater cachet
than Meredith Station, Restaurant, Grill and
Niteclub and certainly more than Meredith Bar and
Grill . The series in this example helps to establish a
set of alternative uses of Meredith Station and the
rhythm appears to suggest mounting excitement.
The apposition is to be distinguished from the
adjectival modifier such as Barney's Good food in a
Country Atmosphere , which serves to describe more
precisely the type of establishment the motorist is
approaching. Such phrases as Family Restaurant and
Country Dining give clues to the eye as to expense
and dress as well as to the establishment's attitude
towards children and perhaps charge cards. Normally
they are not prefixed by an article.
Appositions abound in some areas of the country
and not restricted to restaurants. They seem
to be a mainstay of condominium resorts like The
Margate at Winnepesaukee a Premier Lakes Region
Resort (which suggests ownership); Winterberry a
Resort Village; and Moon Ridge a Point of View ,
which contains a nice whimsy. One can also see appositions
applied to barbers and hairdressers who go
to great lengths to distinguish themselves. Split
Ends a Cosmetology Shop is a nice example of appositional
elegance combined with euphemism in the
appositive and the low key or off-beat opening. Colanders
The Vermont Housewares Outlet uses the definite
article in the apposition to suggest both uniqueness
and some official status. This use differs from
the use of the appositional, The Movie , or The Book ,
which gives the reader a sense of connection with
some previous experience.
The use of the appositive to elevate appears to
be a commercial manifestation of titular colonicity,
the phenomenon noted first by J.T. Dillon in
1981. The phrase refers, of course to the use of
colons in titles of scholarly works. Dillon argues that
the prestige of a field can be empirically determined
through the counting of the percentage of colons in a
a corpus. He demonstrates his point through a comparison
of three fields: literature, psychology, and
education and their increasing use of colons in titles
in the 1970s and 1980s. Literature led the way but
the other fields have caught up. Dillon's article is a
masterly socio-graphic analysis.
It would seem that the commercial world has
seen the power of titular colonicity but has had to
devise its own manifestation. A colon makes sense
on a title page. But would it work on a billboard? I
think not; therefore the appositive. The device is
not without its pitfalls however, as witness the following:
Henry David's a Restaurant . The combination
of the possessive and the apposition creates a
solecism unless we assume that a word was omitted--perhaps
Pub or Saloon . I have passed the sign
several times in the past few years and recently
noted that it had been cleaned and repainted, but
the apostrophe remains. What Henry David possesses
remains an enigma. But we know that it must
be an “upscale” restaurant.
J.T. Dillon. (1981). The emergence of the colon:
An empirical correlate of scholarship. American
Psychologist 36, 879-884. See also M. Townsend.
(1983). “titular colonicity” and scholarship: New
Zealand research and scholarly impact. New Zealand
Journal of Psychology 12, 41-43. Townsend
demonstrates the superiority of U. S. scholarship to
that of New Zealand by the former's heavy use of
colons in titles.
The Gaelic View of Heather
I once read that the Eskimo has 30-odd words for
snow, not all of them impolite, which is not surprising
in view of the Arctic habitat and lifestyle.
But the Gael of Western Ireland and the Scottish
Highlands endured an equally pervasive presence in
the form of hundreds of square miles of heather covering
moor and mountain to almost the complete extinction
of other forms of vegetation. Moor and
mountain use the same word in Gaelic ( monadh ) but
more to the botanical point is the probable relation
of moor to das meer , `the sea.' The loneliness and
the heather-cloaked undulations of the vast deer forests
of northern Scotland (forests distinguished by a
complete absence of trees) are indeed evocative of
the sea.
Heather grows best in a maritime climate, and it
is no coincidence that the homelands of the Celtic
fringe in many places correspond to the western
fringes of Europe. The Celts, pressed to the sea by
the Romans, survived in lands either too rough for
effective military operations or too incompatible to
agriculture, but not too inhospitable for the Erica
plant family. Like the Celts, this botanical family
was well adapted for survival in rough places. It can
grow in sand; it can grow in bogs; and because of a
symbiotic relationship with a wide range of fungi, it
can grow in stony or peaty lands that provide no
nourishment to ordinary plants.
In some places the names of the plant and the
wasteland where it grows are synonyms. In France
it is maquis (and also the name of the guerrillas who
lived there). In southern England it is heath (also
giving heathens , it appears, for those who lived
there).
While gardeners today make the distinction between
heath and heather plants, these words are
said to derive by separate paths from some ancient
word for wasteland; heath via the Anglo-Saxon, and
heather via Norse hadder . In Scandinavia, the plant
itself is called lyng or ling , which is a common name
in Yorkshire and northern England generally for
what the Scots and Irish call heather . Ling is used as
a name in parts of Scotland too, but this includes the
rough grasses as well as the heathers that grow on
the wasterland.
Heath is another common name used in England
for the common heather , but gardeners everywhere
reserve heath for the closely related plants that are
not heather . Heath has also been used for the other
shrubby non-ericaceous plants like gorse ( furze ,
whins ) and broom that could survive on the heath.
In Cornwall, heather is called by an altogether different
name, namely, grig ; and in Wales it is called
grug (pronounced “GREEG”); both words are Celtic,
reflecting their ancient homelands.
In the Gaelic parts of Scotland and Ireland, the
word for heather was fraoch , pronounced nearly like
German fröch . There are many regional differences
in Gaelic, and fraoch can be pronounced “FREWX” or
“FRAWX” in some parts of Gaeldom, perhaps explaining
some of the spellings that have come into
English for health-related words like frawlin or
fraughan for blueberry, and freuchan for the “reinforcing
toe cap of a brogue” (shoe, not accent) to
prevent excessive wear by the heather.
While heath, heather , and ling represent the
Germanic input into English, only grig (Cornish) has
made it directly from Celtic into English. The Celtic
names grug and fraoch apparently come from Old
Celtic v-roikos , which is cognate (or so says Klein's
Etymological Dictionary ) with Latin brucus , meaning
`maned or bristled.' Heaths and heather are indeed
finely leaved plants which in a sense are bristly, but
their botanical name ( Erica for heath, Calluna for
heather) reflect the properties of their stems. Erica
is ultimately from the Greek for `easily broken,' and
Calluna is a Latin and Greek word for `sweep or
broom,' heather twigs being superior to those of
heath for this purpose, which indeed might leave as
much mess as it cleared up. Calluna , although many
variant garden forms are known, consists of only the
one species, Calluna vulgaris . Erica (the name Linnaeus
gave originally to both heath and heather),
however, comprises several hundred species, nearly
all found in the Cape of South Africa, with fewer
than a dozen found in the rest of the world.
In Scotland only two exist; Erica cinerea and Erica
tetralix . In spite of Linnaeus' epithet (`ashy'), the
former is called bell heather by all Scots and fine-leaved
heath by many botanists; the latter is often
called bell heather , too, by noncritical observers
(since the flowers are very bell-like), but is known as
the cross-leaved heath by those who pay more attention
to the strongly two-ranked arrangement of the
tiny needlelike leaves. Ireland has two other heaths
as well, namely E.erigena (`Irish born') and the rarer
E. Mackaiana (`Mackay's Heath'), and a closely related
plant called St.Daboec's or Connemara Heath .
The Irish heath has gone through two prior botanically
mandated name changes, E. mediterranea and
E. hibernica , which is why Mediterranean heath is
another name for it.
Though there are three other (two very rare)
relatives of heath in Scotland and two very local
heaths found mainly in Dorset and Cornwall, the
overall picture for the common experience in
Gaeldom is one heather and two heaths in Scotland,
and one heather and four (or possibly five) heaths in
Ireland. With so limited a number one might have
supposed a simple array of Gaelic terms would suffice
for unarguable assignment to the proper plant,
but that is not so.
Irish Gaelic has an extensive written literature
based on old monastic tradition (and the newer nationalism),
but Scots Gaelic by comparison is in poor
shape. It was dropped at the court of Gaelic kings in
favour of English about 900 years ago, perhaps to
please an English queen or perhaps to ensure the
retention of the English-speaking half of Northumbria
ceded to Scotland. But the effect was the gradual
displacement of Gaelic by the development of
Scots English parallel with southern English (as the
successors to the respective Anglian and Saxon
mainstreams). The rare appearance of Scots Gaelic
in written documents, at least in surviving written
documents, until as late as the 15th or 16th century,
is perhaps a consequence. Or perhaps it was the
strong Celtic-Druid emphasis on oral transmission
that led to the situation at the beginning of this century
that while Scotland had over 230,000 who
spoke Gaelic (many of whom, however, also spoke
English), the majority was technically illiterate in
Gaelic, being unable to read or write in their own
tongue. At this time (1901) Ireland had 640,000
Gaelic speakers in a population of about 4 million,
the same as Scotland. The Isle of Man had 5,000
Gaelic speakers, but, alas, they have almost disappeared
today.
Scots Gaelic dictionaries are heavily dependent
on Irish sources, especially for the older words, and
the dictionaries are full of variant and regional
forms. There are two Scots Gaelic dictionaries
readily available today. One, by Dwelly, was issued
in fascicles from 1901 to 1911, and although the
10th edition was published in 1988, it is only a photocopy
of earlier reprints containing the same errors
as the first edition of 1912. Dwelly set out to compile
the Gaelic from all earlier dictionaries and was
very successful in an encyclopedic effort; but the
work would have been more useful had it an English-to-Gaelic
section and provided some etymological
clues as to meaning.
The second dictionary, by MacLennan, is two-way
and ventures a modest etymology which is helpful.
But the recently issued edition is again only a
photocopy of the 1925 original, and is maddening
in its failure to separate senses through lumping
together of English homonyms without explanation
(e.g., crow : `bird,' `boast,' or `pry-bar'?).
Using Dwelly, MacLennan, and a list of plant
names in a 1925 book of tartans (published by W.A.
K. Johnston) I have compiled the following Gaelic
names for heather with their literal translations.
Sometimes these are given by the dictionary; sometimes
it is the best guess I can come up with in spite
of the inconsistencies, the regionalisms, and the often
considerable changes in the inflected word stems
of Gaelic which create huge pitfalls for the novice
translator.
GAELIC ENGLISH LATIN
fraoch commom heather Calluna vulgaris
gorm `blue heather'
froach bell heather `red Erica cinerea
dearg heather'
fraoch- cross-leaved heath Erica tetralix
Frangach `French heather'
fraoch- Irish heath `Irish Erica erigena
Eireannach heather'
fraoch Connermara heath Daboecia cantabrica
Dhaboch `St. Daboec's
heather'
In addition, Dwelly gives other terms for bell
heather or smooth-leaved heath, as he calls it:
GAELIC ENGLISH
fraoch `tuted heather'
(a)bhadain
fraoch-an- `heath in which wind makes a buzzing
sound' or `which crackles when
being burnt'
fraoch- `cracklng' or `screeching heather'
sgriachain
fraoch- `heather with a loud sound when burstin'
spreadanach
while MacLennan gives:
fraoch- `fived [sic] leaved heath' (for E. cinerea)
badain
fraoch- `cat heather' (for E. tetralix), also rendered
frangach as
mionfhraoch `small heather' and
fraoch `faulty, blemished(?) or twiggy(??)
meangain heather'
Dwelly also gives fraoch-an-ruinnse for the
cross-leaved heath ( E. tetralix ) which might mean
`heather with the long tail,' but more probably
means `heather for rinsing or scouring.' In Scots
English (and Burns's songs) reenge (in its variant
forms) is a `scouring pad made of the twisted stems
of heather,' E. tetralix presumably being best for this
purpose.
From W.A.K. Johnston we learn that fraochdearg
was the badge of clan MacDougal; fraoch-geal
(white heather) the badge of the MacDonnells; and
fraoch gorm the badge worn by clans MacDonald,
MacNab, MacIntyre, and MacAlister, which practice
could have been rather confusing during periods of
clan warfare. He also assigns dluth fraoch to the clan
Robertson, translated as the `fine-leaved heath' (i.e.,
E. cinerea ) but which is literally `near or close to
heather'; and fraoch nam Meinnearach is assigned to
clan Menzies, though the name probably derives
from Archibald Menzies, a well-known 18th-century
botanist of North America, rather than from a very
rare heather this clan is not likely to have encountered,
never mind worn into battle.
Other Gaelic words related to heather are:
fraoch-mara seaweed `heather of the sea'
fraochan bilberry, blueberry, or
whortleberry
fraochag cranberry, but also bilberry, etc.
dearcan-fraoich blueberry `berry of the heather'
Dwelly also gives fraoch nam curra bhitheag
without translation. Since word order and aspiration
give conflicting clues as to noun and adjective, a
number of literal meanings, all equally implausible,
seem possible. Though a gardener might well
suggest `heather of the pointy bit,'a hungry man
could come up with `anger at an unusually small
portion,' and a dentist `a sour expression due to an
uneven bite.
Dwelly says, “See fraochan,” But fraochan can
be blueberry or, cranberry,' or a fit of
passion,' or part of a deer,' or the `extra toe-cap of a
shoe,' This suggests the real translation is `a tapered
little piece of (leather to prevent wear of the shoe by
the) heather.'
Fraoch itself has other meanings which must go
back to Old Celtic. Dwelly gives a `ripple on the
surface of water'; and MacLennan says, `bristles,
anger, a girning expression of countenance.' To help
non-Scots readers, I should add that girning by a
bairn is the precursor or consequence of greeting,
which, like girning, is very grating to a parent.
So, golfers, the next time you are in Ireland or
Scotland, ponder why the Gaels used such
combustible terms for heather and eschewed the
features like bells and crosses that impressed
themselves on Anglo-Saxons. And as you search for
your ball in the fraoch, keep that fraoch off your
face; and though you feel like eschewing your
bootlaces, be careful what kind of fraochan you are
eating.
I was surprised and dismayed at the content of
the lead article in VERBATIM, “The Germanization of
American English” [XVI,4]. You must be desperate
for articles, to have published such a thinly-disguised
screed of Teutomophobia. Indeed, Mr. Mason's
call to purify English of Germanic influences
reminds one of the French hysteria over “Franglais,”
or of the more sinister years in this century
when a “Telefon” become a “Fernsprecher,” a “Radio”
become a “Rundfunk,” and so ordinary a personage
as Mama became a Fricka-like “Mutti.”
If Mr. Mason is so distressed at the state of
American English, I invite him to leave Switzerland
and take up residence in Boston, Massachusetts.
There he can take his pick of universities in which to
begin undoing the damage of gerundial clauses that
take an accusative (“We appreciate you coming...”);
anarchically “creative” spelling (no modern
journalist seems capable of distinguishing between
“phase” and “faze,” let alone spelling words
like “internecine” -- “internascene”?!); and worst of
all, the epidemic of split infinitives that has plagued
this country for the past several years. (True, no less
an authority than H.W. Fowler gave short shrift to
those who would split hairs over split infinitives; but
I feel fairly sure that even he would draw the line at
a phrase like, “To be or to not be ...”) Incidentally,
I refer Mr. Mason to Mr. Fowler's comments
on the German language under the heading “fused
participate” in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage .
Mr. Mason may find a crumb of comfort in realizing
that things in America could be “worse”; apparently,
back around 1776, German missed being
the official American language by one vote. For myself,
I have not ceased to lament that one-vote decision.
In any event, may I suggest that in future,
when considering essays for publication, you ask
yourself if you would publish the essay if the foreign
language under discussion were, say, Yiddish or Polish
or Spanish or French or Russian. If not, then the
essay is clearly bigoted, and should not be accepted
for publication at all.
Amy Stoller's letter [XVII,1] identifies Jerry
Leiber and Mike Stoller as the creators of “Is That
All There Is?” She has inadvertently slighted that
giant of Tin Pan Allee-Thomas Mann. In Disillusionment
(1897), an old man in Venice recalls the
past:
“So this,” I thought, “is a fire. This is what it is
like to have the house on fire. Is this all there is
to it?”
Then, remembering being jilted, he asks,
“Is this all?”
Finally, he expects death to be
“that last disappointment.... So this is the
great experience--well, what of it? What is it after
all?”
And all these years critics have jeered at
Thomas's brother Heinrich as the great popularizer!
VERBATIM, as we know, is about language. It is
difficult to keep language distinct from writing,
though readers of this quarterly might have become
aware that the reviews of books appearing in these
pages often comment on the execrable turgidity of
the writing of most linguists. To be sure, proficiency
in linguistics offers no assurance of proficiency in
writing; indeed, from the extensive reading I have
done in the subject, I could easily be led to believe
that the former precludes that latter. It is questionable
whether comments on writing made other than
in the course of reviews is appropriate in VERBATIM:
perhaps they are best left to the periodicals that specialize
in such matters, like Writer's Digest and The
Writer . However, since many of VERBATIM's readers
are writers, professionally or not, a few personal remarks
might not be considered entirely inapt.
It must be seen that there are many, many different
kinds of writing. For the sake of convenience,
writing is divided into fiction and nonfiction, with
subdivisions of each, too numerous to list here. Because
of the nature of my own work, I read little
fiction and write virtually none, though a few years
ago I did win first prize in England for a short story:
the first prize was a dinner for two at a country restaurant
I shall not identify; I have a feeling that the
second prize was a dinner for four at the same restaurant,
but that did nothing to diminish my elation
at having won. That elation was followed at once by
the ineluctable conviction that the other submissions
must have been very bad for my poor effort to have
taken the prize, and my feelings about the story
have vacillated between those extremes ever since.
In short, I am not what is known in the trade as
“copy proud”:my feelings about my own writing
range from occasional smugness with a job well done
to abject frustration and misery at my inability to
express myself articulated in writing (given the
amount of time and resources available). I fancy that
many writers feel the same way.
I often question whether I am a writer. If a
writer is, by definition, one who writes a fair amount
and does so professionally (for which read “gets paid
for it”), I suppose I can call myself a writer. On the
other hand, I know people who write a great deal,
and who write very well, but whose work has never
been published. It is unfair to include being published
as a criterion of being a writer--at least a
good writer: as we all know, some of the best writers
seem to have been published only by the merest
chance; we also know that some of the worst writers
are published continually and have miniseries and
films made from the trash they grind out.
My sentiments about my own writing alter rapidly
when I encounter a singularly felicitous piece of
writing, and in this connection. I must bring to the
reader's attention a collection of essays by William
B. Ober, M.D., called Bottoms Up! The paperback
edition I have was published in England in 1990 by
W.H. Allen, as an Allison & Busby Book; it was published
earlier in North America, but a bookshop or
library will have to supply the publisher's name.
The essays were originally published in periodicals
like the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine,
The American Journal of Dermatopathology ,
and other professional journals, for Dr. Ober is a
(now retired) pathologist.
There are fourteen essays in the collection, and
if anyone ever had any question about how to distinguish
erotica from pornographica, the answer lies in
these pages: some of these essays are clearly erotic
(“Bottoms Up!The Fine Arts and Flagellation,”
“Robert Musil: What Price Homosexual Sadism?,”
“Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa: Murder, Madrigals,
and Masochism,” and “The Iconography of
Fanny Hill : How to Illustrate a Dirty Book”), but
they are not pornographic; others are somewhat
more clinical (“Johnson and Boswell: `Vile Melancholy'
and `The Hypochondriack”); all exhibit a
quality of writing rarely encountered. I have never
discussed writing with ober, and I am tempted to
ask him whether he must labour mightily to produce
the causal intellectualism that prevades his essays.
(He has another collection, Boswell's Clap & Other
Essays , from the same publisher(s), which is as good
as this one.) Occasionally, when the opportunity presents
itself, he deliberately drops a delicious tidbit:
Following this epicene epiphany of ephebic
eroticism, Törless experiences a profound guilt
reaction.
One gets the distinct impression that Ober enjoys
what he is doing. On the other hand, who can
be sure? Some of the best writers complain that
their best work is the result of monumental mental
effort and many painful rewritings.
This seems an appropriate point to insert a personal
confession. Readers who have noted a marked
increase in typographical errors in VERBATIM can lay
the blame on my doorstep, which supports a very
low boredom threshold. All submitted articles are
read by me; if they are worthy of consideration, they
are read again, carefully, and styled for the compositor;
by the time the proofs arrive, I am reading the
article for the third time and cannot see all the horrible
things the typesetter might have done. It is not
that the articles are boring, merely that the tedium
of reading them for the third or fourth time interferes
with my ability to identify mistakes. Besides, if
there were more errors, they would probably be
easier to catch. But we have very good compositors,
and if they make errors, they are often very subtle.
In the future, I shall try to arrange for someone else
to read proof on VERBATIM. End of apologia.
As the reader can tell, both from these comments
and from my shabby efforts in this periodical,
I can rarely support the rewriting of my own material
and, in fact, almost never rewrite anything of my
own. If the reader wants to read something that is
not only informative and entertaining but can be admired
for its style, panache, and humor, let him get
Dr. Ober's books.
If I find the space to treat this subject again, I
shall discuss the dark side of writing, writing that is
unutterably boring the first time it is read.
“The family said they would try to bury him again
tomorrow.” [Dan Rather, CBS Evening News, . Submitted by ]
“Attractive, divorced Jewish woman 41. Reubenesque,
professional. [From a personal ad in the White
Plains Reporter-Dispatch , . Submitted
by of White Plains who suggests, “Maybe
she wears dotted Swiss.”]
“(The cyclist) hopes to survive the 2,020-mile race
through the French countryside and mountains to ride
down Paris' eloquent avenue, Champs Elysées.” [From
the Los Angeles Times , . Submitted by ]
“Your thumb or fingerprint will be taken.” [From the
California Driver Handbook, . Submitted by
]
“ Millionaire Magazine , Palm Beach, has filed Chapter 7
Bankruptcy in Miami.” [From Freelance Writer's Report ,
. Submitted by ]
“After much adieu, the TC by Masarati Sports Coupe
has finally arrived.” [a caption in Black Enterprise , p. 108. Submitted by ]
“Asked about social need, Burdette said, `Our safety
net has a lot of holes in it.”' [From the Parkersburg (West
Virginia) News , . submitted by
]
