February 2006 Archives
In Honour of Charles Dickens: bumbledom (beadle, choleric); Tapleyism; gamp; Scrooge;
Chadband; podsnap; Dolly Varden
Terms of Wordplay: wellerism; Tom Swiftie (croaker); lipogram; ludic; rebus;
cruciverbalist; rhopalic
Peculiar
The Color Black: black; blackjack (truncheon); necromancy; blackwash (whitewash);
blackshirt; Ebonics; black sheep; melancholy; touchstone
February 7, is the birthday of Charles
Dickens. In his honor we will present eponyms from Dickens, characters whose
names have become words in our language. We paid Dickens a similar birthday
tribute three years ago, and this time we'll present seven more Dickens
eponyms, without duplication.
Our first is rather in the spirit of yesterday's Papierkrieg. OED's
editors seem to have enjoyed themselves when they defined today's word.
bumbledom fussy official pomposity and stupidity, especially as displayed
by the officers of petty corporations, vestries, etc.; beadledom in its glory.
[From Mr. Bumble, the beadle in Dickens's Oliver Twist]
The British ruling
classes' reputation as the high priests of the ancient cult of governmental
amateurism was bizarrely confirmed last week.
"We won the war with
British amateur bumbledom running a smattering of brilliant
professionals. Perhaps we think that because we did it once we can do it
again," says Sir Peter Kemp, a former permanent secretary and
Sonia Purnell, in The Independent, Oct 28, 2001
Bonus words:
beadle a minor parish official formerly used to
usher and keep order during services. Here is how Dickens introduces the type:
Now, Mr. Bumble
was a fat man, and a choleric; so he gave the little
wicket a tremendous shake, and then bestowed upon it a kick which could have
emanated from no leg but a beadle's.
choleric easily
moved to anger
Men of the choleric type take to kicking and smashing - H. G.
Wells
For Dickens's birthday we'll look at a
happy, well-liked character, from his Martin Chuzzlewit.
Mark Tapley repeatedly says there is 'credit' in remaining jolly in a
bad situation. He seeks out work as a gravedigger, "a good damp, wormy
sort of business, sir,
and there might be some credit in being jolly, with
one's mind in that pursuit." What does he think of marriage? "There
might be some credit in being jolly with a wife, 'specially if the children had
the measles and that, and was very fractious indeed." Indeed, feels
uncomfortable in a situation that doesn't offer him such credit!
there never was
a more popular character than Mark Tapley became
; and he attained at last to
such a pitch of universal admiration, that he began to have grave doubts within
himself whether a man might reasonably claim any credit for being jolly under
such exciting circumstances.
Tapleyism optimism
in the most hopeless circumstances [a very rare word]
However, thank
God, I have a good share of Tapleyism in me and come out strong
under difficulties. I think I may confidently say that no man ever saw me out
of heart, or ever heard one croaking word from me even when our prospects were
gloomiest.
William James, Energies of Men
gamp Chiefly
British: a large baggy umbrella.
[After Mrs. Sarah Gamp, in Martin Chuzzlewit, who carried such an
impediment.]
Mary Poppins came to the Banks household, carrying her an umbrella aloft and
blown in by a windstorm. The umbrella was large enough to make this somewhat
plausible! Our quote is from a review of the
Mary Poppins
arrived in
Howard Bird, Poppin round, The Stage Online, Sept. 23, 2004
A reader notes: I know of a much different definition of a gamp. It is a woven
sample. In most uses, it is a sample of colors, arranged in order as on a color
wheel.
To see some examples of color gamps, go here.
Today's is the best-known of all Dickens
eponyms.
Scrooge; scrooge a mean-spirited miserly person; a skinflint
[after Ebenezer Scrooge, miserly protagonist of Dickens's A Christmas
Carol]
And so if a few
politicians propose reducing the rate of growth on spending ... for instance,
that entitlements increase by 6.2 percent rather than 6.3 percent--they get
slammed by liberals as Scrooge-like misanthropes.
John J. Miller, National Review, Dec 31, 2005
A reader notes: The 1950s performance artist (rapper?) Lord Buckley used
"scrooge" as a verb in his mind-boggling interpretation of the
Scrooge story. "I been studying all
my life how to Scrooge people, and I guarantee I done some fine work in dat
direction."
Chadband an oily,
religious/moralistic hypocrite
The Rev. Mr. Chadband, in Dickens's Bleak House (1853), "is
much admired by his dupes, and pretends to despise the 'carnal world' but
nevertheless loves dearly its 'good things,' and is most self-indulgent."
Brewer
Then he had been
the very type of a smug, prosperous, contented Chadband; a
placid
patriarch with an air of disinterested benevolence and unassuming sanctity.
Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend (1971)
The man was a sanctimonious Chadband. He had come with
nefarious designs on
Judith's slender capital. I saw knavery in the whites of his upturned eyes.
William John Locke, The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne: A Novel (1906)
podsnap an
insularly complacent, self-satisfied person who refuses to face unpleasant
facts
[after Mr. Podsnap, in Dickens's Our Mutual Friend]
Today's quote is old but marvelous.
Censorship which
is allowed to grow into podsnappery never saved anything. That
was pretty well tried out during the dark ages. That's why they were dark.
Nebraska State Journal, February 21, 1922, quoting Kansas City Star
Dolly Varden a colorful
[from the flamboyant, colorful costume of Ms. Dolly Varden in Dickens's Barnaby
Rudge.]
The Dolly
Varden trout gets its name from the pattern of its coat. It supposedly
resembles the calico dress worn by Dolly Varden, a character in Charles
Dickens' "Barnaby Rudge."
The
Does it seem odd that a
Dolly Varden 1. cloth a large flower pattern, or a certain dress style
made from that fabric 2. a style of women's hat, large and abundantly trimmed
with flowers
Quilted Robes
Gingham checks, flocked border prints, Dolly Varden prints.
advertisement, Suburbanite Economist (Chicago), October 27, 1971
Terms of Wordplay
This is a word-site, so it seems natural to
devote this week to terms related to word-play.
We are not what we seem, as the needle said to the thread.
It's coming back
to me now, as the captain said as he spit into the wind.
I see, said the
blind man.
I'm laboring under
a false impression, said the die to the counterfeiter.
That's the spirit,
said the medium, as the table began to rise.
Eaves dropping
again, I see, as Adam said when his wife fell out of a tree.
I like to transition from one theme to the next
with a word that fits both old theme and new. We have such a word today.
Wordplay like the above is called a wellerism after Sam Weller,
who spake many a wellerism in Dickens's The Pickwick Papers. When Sam is
frustrated by talk that is slow getting to the point, he exclaims, "Out
vith it, as the father said to his child, when he swallowed a farding
[farthing]."
wellerism a familiar phrase put in the mouth of one whose situation
humorously brings to mind another meaning of that phrase. The double meaning
may be by punning on sound, by a double-meaning of a word, or by a contrast of
figurative and literal usages. [definition by Wordcrafter]
There are specific names for two types of
punning wellerisms.
Tom Swiftie a wellerism based on a punning adverb
[After the Tom Swift children's books by Edward L. Stratemeyer (1862-1930). The
characters rarely just 'said' something; they 'said angrily' or 'said
thoughtfully' or 'said joyfully', etc.]
"We've had a
flat tire," Tom said deflatedly.
"And someone
stole the extra tire," added Tom, tirelessly but despairingly.
"Who stole
the marijuana?" said Tom disjointedly.
"Ouch! I'm
tangled up in barbed wire!" yelped Tom indefensibly.
"My flight
leaves at 8:00" said Tom, airily.
croaker a
wellerism based on a punning verb [term coined by Roy Bongartz]
"I'm
dying," he croaked.
The teacher
changed my grade," Tom remarked.
There's a whale in
the
"I'll be
wearing a mink coat," Thomasina inferred.
"We've
overthrown the government," Tom cooed.
lipogram a
composition excluding words containing some selected certain letter or letters
Here is a familiar verse written without any s. Credit Ross Eckler. An
exercise to the reader is to write this verse, as Mr. Eckler did, with no e,
or no a (changing Mary's name), or no t, or no h.
Mary had a little
lamb,
With fleece a pale white hue,
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb kept her in view;
To academe he went with her,
Illegal, and quite rare;
It made the children laugh and play
To view a lamb in there.
Poems, dramas, and even novels have been
written as lipograms, particularly by the French. Ernest Vincent Wright used
not a single e in his full length English novel Gadsby, which
begins, "If youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up
for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it
practically; you wouldnt constantly run across folks today who claim that 'a
child dont know anything.'
It is said that in the fifteenth century an inferior Persian poet proudly
presented, to the great poet Jami, verses the inferior had written without the
letter alif. Jami pondered and commented, "It would be better if
you had left out the other letters too."
ludic relating to
undirected, spontaneous playfulness (pronounced as in 'ludicrous')
Apparently a technical word for what I think of as childlike, spontaneous fun
Today's excerpts (ellipses omitted) are from the first pages of Language
Play by David Crystal, which I commend to you.
Everyone plays
with language or responds to language play. The aim of this book is to ask why
the playful (or "ludic") function of language is
important. Ludic language has be a badly neglected subject of
linguistic enquiry, yet it should be at the heart of any thinking we do about
linguistic issues. The rules of ludic language are different from
those which govern other uses of language. There are special ways of speaking. Ludic
language exists in hundreds of different genres. Any aspect of linguistic
structure is available to become the focus.
rebus a puzzle in
which words are represented by combinations of pictures and letters.
[Latin by mean of things. It's not clear why this Latin word was applied to
this sort of puzzle. The theory I find most convincing notes the Latin phrase non
verbis sed rebus not words but things.]
Here are three rebuses for you to puzzle over. Paint over to see the answers,
which are in white type.
Wood
John
Mass.
John Underwood,
timing tim ing
split-second timing
.
. . . . . . . . .B
fault man quarrels wife fault
Be above quarrels between man and wife. There
is fault on each side.
cruciverbalist a composer of crossword puzzles; an enthusiast at solving
those puzzles
The first crossword puzzle appeared in the New
York World on December 1, 1913. Its creator, the first cruciverbalist, was
Arthur Wynne, an English-born American journalist. This new sort of puzzle
spread quickly and internationally. Booksellers discovered that dictionary
sales were at an all-time high.
The term cruciverbalist was coined much later. The secondary
sources trace it to 1981, but I have found it used in 1980 by Tom Schwendler in
the Nov. 30
Tipsy actor?
Marlon Brandy. Tipsy southern novel? Tequila Mockingbird. Drives the D.A. to
drink? Bourbon of proof. And the definition of 19 Down was Oriental nurse,
which every cruciverbalist in the universe knows is amah.
Stephen King, Bag of Bones
rhopalic a
"growing" verse, sentence, or series of words, with each item longer
than the one before (typically one element longer)
[Greek rhopalon, a club that grows thicker at one end]
In sentences, "grow" the words one letter at a time.
I do not know
where family doctors acquired illegally perplexing handwriting.
In verses, grow the words. Or grow each line
by one metric foot.
With words, grow by adding a letter and then rearranging to form a new word: a
at tan rant train rating darting drafting. Or play the last game in
reverse, starting with the longest word. Many words can be shortened one letter
at a time, always rearranging to get a new word, until you end with a single
letter. Here are some. Try it with each of these:
destruction
desperate
transpires
flattering
importance
persevering
decorated
shortness
This week's theme comes to us courtesy of Duncan
Howell, of
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
Thesis Statement: "Last week, in a dwy, I spelled yaffles of crannicks
through the gowithy, across the bakeapple bog, and up out of the droke."
I'm not kidding. I really did. This week, I'll explain what I was doing, with a
lot of help from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English. (DNE) and other
sources. All quotes taken from DNE unless otherwise noted.
The authorities vary somewhat, and I will be noting Canadian Oxford Dictionary
(COD), Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
(SOED), American Dialect Dictionary (ADD), Dictionary of Canadianisms (DC),
Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms (DAC), Survey of English Dialects
(SED), and English Dialect Dictionary (EDD).
dwy an eddy, flurry; squall. (DNE)
[EDD has dwyes eddies. COD, SOED have nothing.]
"A mist or
slight shower. Is it going to rain today?' No, it is only a dwy,'
a Newfoundlander may reply."
Journal of American Folklore. VIII, 1895, 39.
Bonus words:
twy "a meteor squall on the
coasts." The Sailor's Word-Book: An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical
Terms (London: Blackie & Son, 1867) 704.
dally noun: sudden lull or slackening of the wind. verb:
of the wind, to turn or shift in direction. (DNE)
When the dallies
are longer than the dwyes, the storm is almost over.
an aphorism I'm passing along from my father, Russ Howell, aged 88.
Thesis Statement: "Last week in a dwy [snow squall], I spelled yaffles of crannicks through the
gowithy, across the bakeapple bog, and up out of the droke."
spell verb: to carry a burden on one's shoulders, usually
halting from time to time for a rest.(DNE)
spell noun: (a) a short distance, especially that between the
resting places of a man with a heavy burden on his back. (b) the burden itself.
(DNE)
[For want of a documented etymology, my
guess is that both the verb and noun senses evolved from the
"resting" connotation.]
"If wood be
wanted before the snow fall, it must be spelled out', that is,
carried on men's shoulders."
Rev. Wm.
"Short distances are in common speech measured by spells.
Rev. Julian Moreton. Life and Work in
While this is a peculiar
Thesis Statement: "Last week in a dwy [snow squall] I spelled [carried, with intermittent rest stops] yaffles of crannicks
through the gowithy, across the bakeapple bog, and up out of the droke."
yaffle an armful (of dried and salted cod-fish, kindling, etc); a
load. (verb: to gather an armful) (DNEΉ)
(He) was charged
with having purloined a quantity, known in this land as a yaffle
of dry fish.
Daily News,
We're going to yaffle them boughs now.
P. K. Devine. Ye Olde St. John's, 1750-1936 (St. John's: The Newfoundland
Directories, 1936) 57
Get over to Lester's field and get another yaffle of dandelions.
Evening Telegram (newspaper)
(Incidental
notes): The "Lester's field" mentioned here was the departure point
for the first successful non-stop trans-Atlantic aircraft flight (1919). And
the dandelions were probably for EATING!
Ή COD has yaffle
but notes: "origin unknown". EDD has yafful ("an
armful") and jaffle. SED has yafful ("armful of
hay"). DNE proposes that the origin is jag(ful), which SOED has.
SOED also has jag ("to carry in a cart or on a pack horse.")
EDD has jag(g).
Thesis Statement: "Last week in a dwy [snow squall] I spelled [carried, with intermittent rest stops] yaffles [armfuls] of crannicks through the gowithy, across the
bakeapple bog, and up out of the droke."
crannick; cronnick; cran a tree or root killed or much
weathered by wind, water or fire; piece of such wood gathered as fuel; small
twisted fir or spruce. (DNE)
You wouldn't cut cronnicks,
you'd just haul em up out o the ground...Cronnicks is old stuff
bent down on the ground; on the small size, no growth in em.
Virginia M. Dillon, The Irish Element, in the Speech of the Southern
Crannicks make excellent pre-dried kindling.
They are easily gathered at old forest fire sites and places where trees have
been previously killed by flooding or insect attacks.
EDD has crannock ("root of furze...which has been burnt"), and
also crank ("dead branch). DC has crunnick. COD has no
direct entry but, interestingly, lists crannog ("an ancient lake
dwelling in
Thesis Statement: "Last week in a dwy [snow squall] I spelled [carried, with intermittent rest stops] yaffles [armfuls] of crannicks [dry spruce and
fir kindling] through the gowithy, across the bakeapple bog and up out of the
droke.
gowithy; gold-withy sheep laurel (kalmia angustifolia),
or other similar sort of low shrub. (DNE)
Gold-withy. Although I believe that this application should be restricted
to kalmia angustifolia L. , it is in fact applied to any shrubby species
occurring in the barrens', e.g. ...Potentilla, ... Rhododendron.
Ernest Rouleau. Studies on the Vascular Flora of the
Note: some of you may know potentilla by the
name known as cinquefoil.
Etymological musings: Wanna know what I think? I think the word came from
"go-with-thee". First, that's the way it is commonly pronounced....
"gowithy" = "go with thee". Second, you always bring home
leaves and twigs stuck to your clothes and in your boots after you walk through
it. It will always go with thee! Finally, lots of common plant names contain
biblical references. ( Burning Bush, Jacob's Ladder, Star of Bethlehem,
Solomon's Seal, etc). Furthermore, "go-with-thee" is a common
biblical quotation. See Exodus 33:14, Judges 7:4, 2 Samuel 13:26, Ezra 7:13.
It's so common, it has invaded secular literature. See Don Quixote, ch.57, and
"The Outsong" in Kipling's Jungle Book.
Anyhow, that's what I think. But...I don't think any of the dictionaries agree
with me!
A reader notes: A "withy" is a strong, flexible twig, used in making
baskets and the like, often from the willow. I don't know what the
Today's word has made me distinctly hungry.
I'm off for breakfast. - WC
Thesis Statement: Last week in a dwy [snow squall], I spelled [carried, with intermittent rest stops] yaffles [armfuls] of crannicks [dry spruce and
fir kindling] through the gowithy [sheep laurel,
etc.], across the bakeapple bog and up out of the droke.
bakeapple a low plant growing in bogs and producing an amber berry in
late summer; cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus). (DNE)
DC has baked-apple berry; COD has bakeapple = cloudberry, "corruption of
Inuit** appik' + apple".
Bakeapples (which, to me, bear no resemblance in appearance or flavour to baked
apples) are to die for, but are EXTREMELY hard to harvest. Consequently, they
demand a premium price. A friend of mine, who was exhausted from struggling
through soft peat bogs on his first bakeapple-picking expedition, said
"Now I understand why they cost $60.00 a gallon!" In my opinion,
they'd be cheap at twice the price. They also grow in
They had their
refreshments, which included tea-buns and bakeapple jam.
Gordon Pinsent, John and the Missus: A Novel (Toronto: McGraw-Hill
Ryerson Ltd., 1974) 77.
He remembers the bumper buckets of berries he gathered from the barrens
surrounding the town, the bakeapples that he picked from the
Harold Horwood,
...and various delicious berries. Of these latter, the
Sir Edmund Gosse, The Life of Philip Henry Gosse (London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1890) 50.
Bonus word: whortleberries blueberries. Also known in
[I believe whortleberries and huckleberries (the latter are not found in
Thesis Statement: "Last week in a dwy [snow squall], I spelled [carried, with intermittent rest stops] yaffles [armfuls] of crannicks [dry spruce and
fir kindling] through the gowithy [sheep laurel,
etc.] across the bakeapple [cloudberry] bog,
and up out of the droke."
droke a valley with steep sides, sometimes wooded and with a stream.
(DNE)
Mr. Munn's
identification of droke' as a
P. K. Devine, Folklore of
COD has droke: "A steep-sided valley.
(origin unknown)."; EDD has drock: "a small watercourse."; DC
has droke: "a copse."
So.........
Last week, in a snow squall, I carried, with intermittent rest stops, armfuls
of dry spruce and fir kindling through the sheep laurel, potentilla and
rhododendrons, across the cloudberry bog and up out of the steep wooded valley.
Or, to put it more succinctly.......
Last week, in a dwy, I spelled yaffles of crannicks through the gowithy, across the bakeapple bog, and up out
of the droke.
Phew! I'm tired!
Let's spend a week on easier words. We've
had themes about spring colors and autumn colors, and this week we'll look at
the color black, starting with black itself.
Incredibly, black may have originally meant white. In Old English
the usual word for this dark color was entirely different. It was sweart
as in modern swarthy; Germanic languages still use cognates of sweart
to mean the dark color we now call 'black'. When Old English did use
words in the pattern b-l-a-k (with the 'a' either long or short), they meant
'white'. (With the long 'a' it may also have meant 'black'. I am unclear on
this.)
By the time of Middle English it is doubtful which color the word means!
Context sometimes indicates 'white, pale', sometimes indicates 'black', and
often leaves you completely in the dark.
Even today, the sound of 'black' is much like such 'white' words as French blanc
= white (as in Mont Blanc) and English bleach to whiten. And one can see
a connection, in that a fire emits light (white) and scorches wood (black). (In
the same vein, Greek phlegein = to burn, scorch compares with Latin flagrare
= to blaze, glow, burn.)
Today black has a negative connotation when used metaphorically, as in
'black arts'. That connotation emerged early in other tongues (Kali, the Hindu
death-goddess, is from Sanskrit kali = the black one), but in English
the negative connotation does not seem to have arisen until the late 1500s.
That too suggests to me that the English meaning was unsettled until a bit
before then.
Today's word can mean a certain card game,
but we are looking at another meaning.
blackjack U.S.: a short weapon for bludgeoning, consisting of a
weighted head and a pliable handle
A blackjack is a small stealth weapon, easily made and easily concealed, used
to strike the back of the head. To make a simple blackjack, partially fill a
small cloth pouch with lead pellets, or even loose coins. Grasp it by the loose
cloth at the top of the pouch, and swing it with a flip of the wrist. See here
for picture and details.
Bonus word:
truncheon Brit: a short thick stick carried as a weapon, as by a British police officer
Compact OED dictionary erroneously defines 'blackjack' as a kind of truncheon.
Not so: a truncheon, a solid stick about a foot long, is no a concealed weapon,
and it is manufactured. But the beauty of a blackjack is that it is small
enough to hide in a pocket, is easy to make, and can be quick and quiet.
necromancy
prediction by communicating with the dead; think "sιance". (more
generally: divination, sorcery, witchcraft, enchantment)
An interesting word, but the prefix necro- is Greek meaning means 'death,
corpse, etc.' as in 'necrosis'. So what does this have to do with 'black'?
Its a tale of two prefixs with confusingly-similar sounds. Nigr-
(black) is Classical Latin. That Latin also adopted necro- (death) in necromantia,
which came to mean 'death prophecy', predicting by talking with the dead.
That's clearly what we'd call a black art, and in Medieval times that Latin necromantia
became nigromantia 'black prophecy'.
By the years 1100-1400 that Medieval Latin word in nigr- form had come
into many languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Occitan, Dutch, high
and low German), and in the 1300s English took it from French: nigramancie;
nigromance. That is, today's word came into English as 'black prophecy'.
Only later (1450? 1550?) did the English start to correct back to the necro-
spelling of Classical Latin.
To whitewash is to give something a
false appearance of good, by concealing or glossing over its the faults.
Similarly,
blackwash to
blacken the character of by highlighting the faults ofΉ
(noun senses of each: something that does so; the act of doing so)
When a writer uses 'blackwash' this way, he almost always is contrasting it
with a preceding word 'whitewash'. I suspect that a reader would not understand
'blackwash' if it stood alone as a separate word, without such a contrast. If
so, query whether this 'blackwash' can really be considered to be a 'word'.
Then came scandal:
two special investigators charged that [etc.] [Atlanta] Mayor Jackson promised
"no whitewash, and no blackwash
either." Last week he reached his verdict: his old friend had to go.
Time Magazine, Mar. 20, 1978
The inquiry
is turning out to be the complete opposite of a cosy, well-spun whitewash.
It's a pity there is no such word as "blackwash"
because that would aptly convey the way in which pretty well everyone involved
is going to emerge - with permanent damage to their reputations.
Nicholas Leonard, This inquiry will blackwash Blair and the BBC,
Irish Independent, Aug. 18, 2003
'Blackwash' has further
senses, not discussed here. In particular, there seems to be sense in cricket.
Can any of our UK readers advise?
Ή Definitions are by wordcrafter, for I do not think the dictionary definitions are accurate. A false appearance of good can be created by concealing faults, or by claiming non-existent virtues. But only the former, not the latter, is 'whitewashing'. Similarly for 'blackwashing'.
A reader notes: When a side wins a test series 5-0 it is known as a
"whitewash". I believe some 30 or so years ago England was on the
wrong end of such a beating at the hands of the West Indies, all of whose
players were black. Some papers took to calling the series a
"blackwash". Such a coinage would never be made in these more
racially sensitive times, of course.
blackshirt a member
of a fascist organization
Mussolini's followers in the Italian Fascist party, before and during World War
II, were called the blackshirts after their black uniforms. Like groups
in England got the same name. According to the dictionaries the term is now
more general, not limited to those organizations and that time period.
However, although OED and other several respected dictionaries claim
this broader usage, I haven't been able to find quotes employing 'blackshirt'
that way. The term always seems to refer to the specific fascists of Mussolini
or his contemporaries. I'm not convinced that the term 'blackshirt' really has
the more general sense of 'any fascist'.
The speech of many not all
African-Americans is not standard English. Such 'black English' has many
different versions, and linguists disagree over whether to view this black
English as English (non-standard), or as dialects of English, or as separate
creole language(s).
This is not just a dry academic disagreement without real-world impact.
Consider: is Ebonics a 'foreign language', for purposes of school programs to
assist students who speak only a foreign language? At least one major school
district, Oakland California, has answered 'yes'.*
With these different views come different definitions of today's word. I take
OED's definition.
Ebonics African-American English, esp. when considered as a distinct
language or dialect with linguistic features related to or derived from those
of certain West African languages, rather than as a non-standard variety of
English
[coined 1973 by Prof. R. L. Williams, blending ebony and phonics.
An alternate term is African American Vernacular English, or AAVE.]
There is an emotional charge to many usages of this word. For example, this
quote reminds me of how in the 1820s some self-righteous British
prescriptivists disparaged the speech differences in the US.
Ebonics, or Black English, has become a
language that even the faultless housewives of suburbia have come to
understand. But slang and pure stupidity, which can be avoided no matter what
the ethnicity may be, have mesmerized the American public, undoing years of
language taught in schools.
Deidre Mace, Debauching English, Orlando Sentinel, Feb. 25, 2006
*A reader notes: I believe they did this because they were applying for a grant
from a bilingual education program, so they tried defining 'ebonics' as a
foreign language.
Three common terms are offered for their
black etymologies.
black sheep a bad character from an otherwise respectable group
Why would a sheep be considered bad merely because it is black? Because its
wool was worthless, since it could not be dyed a different color.
melancholy adj.: sad or depressed. noun: deep,
persistent sadness
Greek melas black. An excess of black bile was believed to cause
depression.
touchstone a standard or criterion used to judge something's quality
or genuineness
Formerly, a variety of hard black stone was used to judge the purity of gold or
silver, by the streak left when the metal was rubbed against the stone.