September 2008 Archives
Terms with Numbers: 40 winks; eighty-six; paint-by-numbers;
the 400; 23 skidoo (pie wagon); ninety-nine; quaver (demiquaver,
semidemiquaver, hemisemidemiquaver, quasihemisemidemiquaver)
Learning New Words: peloton; tawse;
Sitzfleisch; repechage; cloisonné; electronic ink;
ruched
Portmanteau ("Blend") Words: splog;
squiggle; galumph; blither; mocktail; cyborg; sexile
Personalities: loquacious; garrulous; voluble; scapegrace; misocapnist; crepe-hanger; pillock (haver)
Terms with Numbers
Yesterday’s
‘ad infinitum’ puts me in mind of numbers.
In some
ways, numbers are like people. They can be proper, or at least discrete, but of
them are are improper. Some are negative; some are positive. Some are rational;
others irrational. They can be transcendental or even imaginary. They can be
round or they can have a point – and those that have a point often repeat
themselves!
Numbers
appear in many idioms whose meaning wouldn’t be obvious from the meanings of
the individual words. Interestingly, almost all those idioms use one-digit
numbers, especially the lowest ones: First Lady, second fiddle, third
rate. This week we’ll turn the harder group, and look at some of those that
use other numbers.
40
winks – a short
sleep (usually not in bed)
How easy it would be to put his head down on the desk and
close his eyes and catch 40 winks.
– Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
eighty-six – (orig. restaurant/bar slang)
to refuse to serve (the item is out, or the customer is unwelcome). by
extension: to throw out; to eject or discard; to get rid of
My girlfriend has a pair of shoes she adores [that] have
begun to smell more strongly than a fish market. She won't get rid of them and
its becoming embarrassing to take her out in public with her smelly feet. How
can I tell her to eighty-six the shoes without hurting her
feelings?
– OSU Daily Barometer (
I recall
reading that restaurants once had an elaborate number-slang, with numbers to
mean “poor tipper” or “customer trying to sneak out without paying”, etc. But
for the life of me I can’t find any confirmation. Can anyone help?
paint-by-numbers – depreciative: merely
mechanical or formulaic (rather than imaginative, original, or natural)
[figurative,
from “painting” by filling in a pre-printed outline, on which each outlined
area is marked with a number indicating the color to be used]
… a trite movie-of-the-week emphasizing resiliency,
resourcefulness and risk-taking -- a paint-by-numbers approach.
–
the 400 – the highest society of a
locality
[Coined by
Ward McAllister (1827–1895), arbiter of New York City society. Supposedly “four
hundred“ was the number of people who really mattered, or the number that Lady
Astor’s ballroom could accommodate.]
Their sons attend the same expensive academies, their
daughters are polished off at the same elite schools; their sons and daughters
meet together at the assemblies of the 400, as well as at
the summer resorts and winter resorts and spring resorts, and they intermarry
and inter-divorce; and the caste of the great rich emerges.
– University [of
Even as this has made for a somewhat fairer society than
the world of the 400, it has added a note of desperation.
– James Fallows, What Did you do in the Class War,
Daddy?, Washington Monthly, Oct. 1975
You might
think the term “the 400” is now only a historical curiosity. But notice the Fortune
Magazine rankings. Its ranks the largest corporations as the Fortune 100,
the Fortune 500, and the Fortune 1000. But when it lists the
wealthiest people, it lists the Fortune 400.
23
skidoo (or just ‘skidoo’)
– scram; leave quickly
[slang,
from the first part of the 1900s. Origin unknown – but I’m researching it now.
More to come, I hope.]
The cop gave the bawling kid a nickel and told him to shut
up. He dispersed the crowd very simply by telling them he’d send for the pie
wagon and take them all down to the station house if they didn't twenty-three
skidoo. The crowd scattered.
– Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in
Bonus
word:
pie
wagon – a police
van; a van used to transport prisoners to jail
[old
slang; rarely seen]
ninety-nine – used by physicians to detect
areas of the lungs that have become solidified, as from pneumonia. When the
patient speaks or whispers, the sound is loudest in these areas, and the
loudness can be noticed by stethoscope or by ‘a palm on the patient’s back.
“Ninety-nine”
was the usual word spoken, perhaps due to an error. It is said that the test
was first developed by a German doctor, who used "neun und neunzig"
because the vowel sounds would maximize the effect. English doctors simply
translated the German words into English, preserving the meaning but abandoning
the sounds!
A. A.
Milne, of Winnie the Pooh fame, used this term along with a nice pun on
“bed”. He tells of a physician who, with typical medical arrogance, ignores his
patient's floral preferences.
There once was a Dormouse who lived in a bed
Of delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red),
And all the day long he'd a wonderful view
Of geraniums (red) and delphiniums (blue).
A Doctor came hurrying round, and he said:
"Tut-tut, I am sorry to find you in bed.
Just say 'Ninety-nine,' while I look
at your chest.
Don't you find that chrysanthemums answer the best?"
The Dormouse looked round at the view and replied
(When he'd said "Ninety-nine")
that he'd tried and he'd tried,
And much the most answering things that he knew
Were geraniums (red) and delphiniums (blue).
[etc.]
– A. A. Milne, The Dormouse and the Doctor
In music,
the ♪ is called an eighth-note in
the
demiquaver – half a quaver; a 16th note
semidemiquaver – half a demiquaver; a 32nd note
hemisemidemiquaver – half a semidemiquaver; a 64th
note
quasihemisemidemiquaver – half a hemisemidemiquaver; a
128th note
Not
exactly terms you’ll find in everyday use, of course. But fun, and worth much
more than a quasihemisemidemiquaver of amusement.
It is impossible for you to know in advance exactly where
to set down the pickup head to catch a favorite hemisemidemiquaver,
grace note, or tympani bang.
– Nicholas Rosa, Small Computers for the Small Businessman
Learning New Words
How many
words does an average person know? Many! A youngster is a linguistic vacuum
cleaner, sucking up new words at an incredible pace.¹
We adults
are of course less voracious. Yet upon reflection I was surprised new words we
adults come across, even those of us who already have large vocabularies. This
week I’ll present words, new to me, that I’ve come across in the last few
weeks. (And I mean “come across” – these are not words I dug up in a word-hunt
through dictionaries, word-lists, etc.)
Here’s one
I heard in a broadcast of the Olympics.
[The broadcaster used it in a rowing race, referring to the pack of
coaches, etc., who bicycled along the riverbank, keeping abreast with the
racing boats while shouting instructions.]
peloton – competitive cycling: a
densely packed group of riders, sheltering in each others' draft. In a
mass-start race, most riders ride in one large peloton for most of the race.
[from
French for a rolled up small ball. A related word, peloter, means “to
caress sensually; to cuddle”.]
… they did not even mount a serious challenge, attacking
twice, but failing to make a significant breakaway from the peloton.
– The Times, Aug. 20, 2008
¹ The most sophisticated estimate [is that] an average American
high school graduate knows 45,000 words. If proper names, acronyms [etc.] had
been included, the average would probably be something like 60,000 words.
Is 60,000 words a lot or a little?
Word learning generally begins around the age of twelve months. Therefore, high
school graduates, who have been at it for about seventeen years, must have been
learning an average of ten new words a day continuously since their first
birthdays, or about a new word every ninety waking minutes.
Remember that
are talking about listemes, each involving an arbitrary pairing [of sound with
meaning]. Think about having to memorize a new batting average or treaty date
or phone number every ninety minutes of your waking life since you took your
first steps.
– Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct (ellipses
omitted)
tawse – a leather strap used for
disciplining children
OED says
that it is “used in Scottish and many English schools.” Ugh.
Academic standards were high and the teachers there took
their job seriously. They were quite determined that we would master our
subjects and any slackness was quickly followed by a few strokes of the leather
`tawse’.
– James Herriot, James Herriot's Dog Stories
(author’s introduction)
The chief use of friendship is to inflict pain. Our
friends are so many lashes on the great tawse by which we are
daily lacerated.
– Virginia Woolf, as quoted in Virginia Woolf by
Hermione Lee
Apparently the publisher censored this from Woolf’s
manuscript.
Today, a
delicious word. It’s from German sitzen “to sit” + Fleisch
“flesh”; hence “sitting on your fanny”.
Sitzfleisch – the ability to endure or persist
in some activity [Characteristically German?]
I would
say this has two slightly-different senses.
1. plodding, unrelenting persistence
at a task
The right-winger substitutes Sitzfleisch,
unrelieved and unrelenting labor, for flashy outbreaks of genius.
– The Nation, June 21, 2004
[Paleontologist Harry] Whittington is meticulous and
conservative … – exactly the opposite of anyone’s image for an agent of
intellectual transformation. He is, by temperament, a man of ideas, but happily
possessed of the patience and Sitzfleisch needed to stare at
blobs on rocks for hours on end.
– Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and
the Nature of History
2. the ability to sit still and
tolerate something boring
Sitzfleisch is also needed for some O'Neill plays and nearly every
Wagner opera.
– New York Times, Dec. 3, 1987
The school degree really tells you something: that it's sitzfleisch
[the ability to sit still] that counts.
–
Here’s
another word I picked up from watching the Beijing Olympics. An interesting
root-meaning.
repechage (or repêchage) – a trial
heat (esp. in rowing) where competitors who have lost a heat get another
chance to qualify for the semifinals or finals
[from
French, with literal meaning of “to fish up again”; re- + pêcher
to fish]
[pronounce
last syllable -shäzh; accent on last syllable or on first]
After the first round loss, now all the hopes for Rajiv
would lie on the Repechage round.
– Times of
They cruised to victory in the repechage
yesterday (Wednesday) to take their place in the six-team final.
– Kent News (
The eight finished second in its qualifying heat, which
meant it had to row in the repechage to try to win a place in the
final.
–
I picked
up this word at an art show three weeks ago, when I asked an artist about the
work she displayed.
cloisonné (pronounced klwaazonay) – a
kind of decorative enamelwork: areas are outlined by metal filaments mounted on
a backing, and are then filled in with enamel of different colors
[from
French for ‘partitioned’; ultimately from Latin claudere to close, lock]
Annie examined the large cloisonné leopard
in delight. … The exotic, intricate cloisonné design was worked
gold and green and turquoise over black. The spectacular beast had brilliant
green eyes and sported a jeweled collar.
– Jayne Ann Krentz, Wildest Hearts
Do you
watch the newsstands? Just a few days ago a new term and technology came into
popular-press use, when the current issue of Esquire Magazine hit the
newsstands. Part of the magazine-cover in printed is electronic ink.
THE WORLD’S FIRST E-INK COVER
– cover
page, Esquire Magazine, Oct. 2008
(best seen with the “watch in high quality”, just
below-right of the image)
As best I
can tell, all prior use and definition of the term (and there is a lot of it)
concerns the technological method, not the resulting product. So I’ll be the
first to assay defining it in the ordinary way, in terms of what it presents to
the user.
electronic
ink – a coated
substance, of paper-like thickness and flexibility, whose colors at each point
can be changed (by electric stimulus) to produce changing text and images
This term
was picked up while channel-surfing, from the show What Not to Wear.
ruched or rouched – women’s
clothing: having prominent pleating, as a decorative feature
Notice these three
illustrations. The dictionaries seem to say rouche
is a kind of trim or edging. But the pictures show that the pleating may be
part of the main fabric, rather than an add-on.
A recent
example:
Conveniently, on the rack next door, I also spy a cotton
dress with a trendy ruched top for just £17, reduced from £19.99.
– Mirror (on-line),
Interesting
etymology. Ruche traces back to Old French rusche “beehive”
(often made of plaited straw), and some take it further back to Medieval Latin rusca
“bark of a tree” (used for making beehives). I’m speculating that it may be
akin to rustic, which would be an odd pairing of rustic simplicity with
ruched sophistication.
Sometimes
a word is formed by blending two words together. For example, the word motel
was formed as motor hotel. This week we’ll look at
some of these “blend words”. We’ll begin with one which, fitting last week’s
theme, is a word that I learned recently. In fact, just a few day ago.
splog – (from spam blog):
a fake blog, without meaningful content, set up to attract hits to generate
advertising revenue or Google-ranking
There is active advertising to be done on blogs, too. …
Google's Adsense service will automatically place context-related ads on a blog
page, splitting the click-measured revenue with the blogger. So far, so good.
But Adsense has set in motion an ugly arms race online as robot bloggers --
clever computer programs -- have generated hundreds of thousands of spam blogs,
or "splogs."
A splog, though unreadable, is seeded with
words that will attract Google ads. A computer-user may be annoyed at finding
himself staring at a screen full of gibberish but click on an ad anyway,
allowing the robot blogger to harvest revenue. This sleight of hand has the
Numerati hard at work getting their software to distinguish between a blog and
a splog.
– Wall Street Journal, Sept. 14, 2008, reviewing The
Numerati by Stephen Baker
Isn’t splog
a fun-sounding word? (Many blend-words have a funny sound to them: splog,
smog, blotch, jounce, twirl, skuzzy, slosh
and grungy.) So is today’s word. It was at first a verb, meaning “to squirm
and wriggle”, but is now mostly used as a noun.
squiggle – a small wiggly mark or scrawl (verb:
to squirm and wriggle)
noun use (aptly language-related): And the Hebrew – she
didn’t even enjoy reading in her own language, much less struggling to decode
the strange black squiggles that Mordechai was always trying to
get her to remember.
– Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book
verb use (ellipses omitted): [Wal-mart founder Sam] Walton
added the practice of leading his own company cheer. “Gimme a W!” he’d
shout. “W!” the workers would shout back, and on through the Wal-Mart
name. At the hyphen, Walton would shout “Gimme a squiggly!” and squat
and twist his hips at the same time; the workers would squiggle
right back.
– Bob Ortega, In Sam We Trust [slightly different
etymology here? <wink> ]
Can the
funny sound of a blend-word cause its meaning to change? When Lewis Carroll
coined the word galumph, he apparently meant “to gallop in triumph”;
"to prance about in a self-satisfied manner." But the word has a
lumbering, clumsy sound, and perhaps that explains its newer meaning.
galumph – to move in a clumsy, ponderous,
or noisy manner [in 1st quote, a noun]
the newer sense:
But, while you could never call her nimble, she chased
around the [tennis] court with an energetic galumph …
– Telegraph, June 25, 2008
Half a hundred elephants galumph around the
ring and take a bow in unison.
– Time Magazine, Apr. 21, 1941
the older sense; still in use:
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
– Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky (1872)
The Triumphal Galumph of Dr. Seuss
– Washington Post (headline), Sept. 26, 1991
“He’s a
blithering idiot!”
I’d long
known the phrase, and had thought that the “blithering” was just a word to add
emphasis, just like saying, “He’s a f_cking idiot!” Not so. To blither
has a very specific and useful meaning, and is completely apt in that phrase.
blither – to make long and rambling talk,
without sense; to blather (noun: such talk)
Some
dictionaries it’s from Old Norse; some say from Scots, and some suggest a
blending of blather and dither. But does it mean “too much talk”
[blathering] or “too much talk and not enough action” [dithering]?
All the dictionaries say the former, and they are probably right, but a few
quotes include a sense of dithering. Here’s one.
… we stagger and blither our way toward the
inevitable decision about
– National Review, Our Blithering World: Where’s
the vision and leadership?, Feb.1, 2007
mocktail – [mock + cocktail]
a cocktail with no alcohol
Ya Ya moved into a sparking new high-rise development. No
one in
– David Sedaris, Naked (ellipses omitted)
cyborg – [cyber- + organism]
a person [or animal] whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal
limitations, [or are controlled,] by elements implanted into the body
The
dictionary definitions are a bit more narrow. I added the bracketed words,
based on quotes such as this one.
The next time a moth alights on your window sill, it could
actually be a spy - one of a new generation of cyborg insects
with implants wired into their nerves to allow remote control of their
movement. Researchers have already developed remote control systems for rats,
pigeons and even sharks. Furthermore, animals' sensory abilities far outstrip
the vast majority of artificial sensors. And if you can hide your control
system within your cyborg’s body, it would be virtually
indistinguishable from its unadulterated kin - the perfect spy.
– New Scientist, March 6, 2008 (ellipses omitted)
You won’t
find this word much in the published press, but I gather it’s well-known,
throughout the
sexile – to banish one’s roommate from
the dorm room, so that one have privacy there for sex with one's partner
She explained to him that she couldn't sexile
her roommate for a second night in a row …
– Laura Sessions Stepp, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue
Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both
Personalities
What could
be more fascinating than human beings, in all our endless variety? This week
we’ll present some nouns and adjectives for describing various personalities in
our lives.
loquacious – given to much talking; very
talkative
Your friend the patrolman says a great deal. … I never
suspected that he could be so loquacious or that he was capable
of such perceptive comment.
– John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
MW says
that the word loquacious “suggests the power of expressing oneself
articulately, fluently, or glibly.” I disagree: to me the word usually focuses
on the high quantity of free and easy speech, regardless of its quality. But
hey! I’m not the expert.
garrulous [noun form: garrulity]
– talkative – usually in a negative sense of being long and rambling, wordy; or
trivial; and tedious, tiresome and annoying
Typically
applied to the elderly, with the condescending sense of “Well, we can be
charitable toward the old fool.”
She isn't wicked: she's only a silly, garrulous
old woman who has got into a habit of grumbling, and feels that a little
kindness, and rest, and change would due [sic] her all right.
– C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
Still
another on of the general concept of talkativeness.
voluble – talkative (stressing fluency or
glibness; rapid and ready of speech)
[U.S football players] Upshaw and Shell also had adjoining
lockers in the Raiders’ dressing room. Though Shell is quite intelligent, few
writers ever discovered that because he was so quiet. Upshaw was not. Almost
from the beginning, he was an articulate, voluble speaker.
Writers and broadcasters gravitate naturally to players like that because they
provide the needed quotes and sound bites …
– Pro Football Weekly, Aug. 26, 2008
scapegrace – an incorrigible scamp; a rascal.
(Often with the semi-complimentary sense of “a likeable rascal”.)
Like many reformed villains …, the home secretary has
decided to recast himself as a loveable rogue, a charming scapegrace.
– Guardian Unlimited, Jan. 30, 2001
Here's an
little-known word for a very common personality. We all know this type of
person. Many of us are this type of person. It’s nice to have a name for
it.
misocapnist – person who hates tobacco smoke
As smoking in misocapnist North America is
declining, cigarettes are cheap and plentiful in
– K. Lee Washington, A Jewel Amid the Yellow Dust
A
no-nonsense, colorful word today.
crepe-hanger – a gloomy pessimist; a kill-joy
[originally,
one who hung up crepe (black silk, formerly used for mourning clothes)
as a sign of mourning. Also spelled with the hyphen omitted, either as one word
or as two separate words.]
There are rules for almost anything
you could name. Here is a set for how to avoid being popular. … Score on six
and only your mother can love you. … 2. Complain. Take the negative attitude
every time. Be a crepehanger.
– (
”This is how we’re going to handle campaign contributions.”
“What campaign contributions?”
asked Peck. "Our money's drying up. We're damned near broke."
"Peck," said
– Robert Laxalt, The Governor's
Mansion
pillock – British: a stupid person;
a fool, an idiot [orig. Scottish for “penis”]
Apparently
an unkind word not to be used in good company, and used figuratively (“You
stupid pillock!”) rather than literally. Can our British readers explain
further?
[Iain’s adult son has insulted his lady friend.]
Iain tched … . You’re haverin’ love.
I'm not angry with you, I'm angry with that pillock son I
spawned.
- Katie MacAlister, Men in Kilts
My wife fled the minute she saw me and I was left standing
in the middle of the room with a bunch of flowers in my hand, looking like a
complete pillock.
–
Bonus
Word:
haver – 1. Scottish: to
talk foolishly; babble. 2. British: to act in an indecisive
manner.
