March 2008 Archives
Fossil Words: kith and kin; hem and haw; hue and cry; dribs and drabs; spick and span; kit and caboodle; nook and cranny
More surviving fossils: whelm;
hoar (hoarfrost, hoary); fangled
as in newfangled); fettle (as in fine fettle); cahoots;
woebegone; short shrift
Archaic Words: lief; arrant; eftsoons; thorp (betide); whoreson (umbustious); hight
(hostler, ostler, palfrey); clepe
Para-words: paraphernalia; parable; paraplegia; paranoia;
paraphilia;
paraschite; parody
Fossil Words
The
only riddance is “good riddance”, the only way to hunker is to “hunker down”, and
the only way to be “amok” is to “run amok”. These are words which in essence
are used only in a set phrase. You might call them “one-trick-pony words”.
This
week we’ll look at one-trick-pony words that were once more general, but have
now become forgotten; the phrases preserve them as fossils. There are
surprisingly many of them, so for the sake of cutting the list we’ll examine
those used in “and” phrases.
kith [as in kith and kin] – familiar persons, taken
collectively; one's friends, neighbors, acquaintances
You’ll
sometimes find “kith” standing alone, especially in the press of
The demography-crossing thing that
undergirds this election year, I think, is a strong, broad desire to punish
– Washington Post, Aug. 2, 2000, and
elsewhere.
Per a reader’s
comment:
This “kith” is unrelated to the lisping verb, as in, “Give me a kith on the
lips, thweetie.” Though admittedly, each has a sense of “familiarity”.
hem and haw (alternate forms are ~ and hawk; ~ and ha; and hum
and ~) –
1. to make an inarticulate murmur in a pause of speaking, from
hesitation, embarrassment, etc.
2. to repeatedly pause or digress in order to evade saying something
directly; or, to repeatedly delay and discuss to avoid acting
Definition
2. is generally not found in the dictionaries, but I think it’s the more
common meaning. See quote.
City officials were notified, but because of
bureaucratic hemming and hawing, nothing was done.
–
hem – interjection: a slight half-cough to get attention,
warn, or express doubt or hesitation (also [noun and verb]: the sound
itself; to make this sound)
haw – interjection and noun: an utterance marking hesitation
In
the familiar phrase hue and cry (a clamor of pursuit; a cry of alarm;
outcry), what is a hue?
hue – outcry, shouting, clamor, esp. one raised by a
multitude in war or the chase
1779
is the most recent example I can find of this hue without a cry:
As soon as M. Lally appeared, a hue
was set up by the whole assembly, hisses, pointing, threats and every abusive
name
“Hue
and cry” started as a legal term. “A hue … is the old common-law
process of pursuing, with horn and with voices, all felons, and such as have
dangerously wounded another." (Blackstone, 1875). Anyone witnessing a
felony was required make hue and cry, and all able bodied men, hearing the
shouts, were obliged to assist in the pursuit of the felon. (wikipedia)
There's an ancient common law principle
called "hue and cry." When you see someone commit a
crime, you're supposed to raise a hue and cry -- "Stop,
thief!" -- so bystanders will pursue the wrongdoer.
– CNN.com, Aug. 2, 2002
1502: "Ony persone … that wyll not helpe
constable, sergeauntis and other officers … when hue and crye is
made."
"In
dribs and drabs" means “in small and intermittent sums or amounts”,
but you rarely hear separately of a drib or a drab.
drib (verb): to fall in drops; to dribble; later, noun:
a drop, a petty or inconsiderable quantity
drab (noun): 1. a slattern (a dirty and untidy woman);
or, a harlot; 2. later: a small or petty sum (of money)
… the supply of reliable, objective
information about the war's progress has been scant. Most of the dribs
that have been released are coming from -- or have been carefully screened by
-- Pentagon officials or their coalition equivalents.
– Time Magazine, Feb. 4, 1991
Even if it improved schools, it would do so
in drabs, not in a big splash.
–
spick and span – neat, trim, and smart, as if quite new
This
term comes from wood and nails.
A
chip of wood is called a ‘spoon’, from Old English spôn and the
ancient root *spænu-. (Yes, this spoon = woodchip is the same
word as our spoon = eating-utensil; the eating sense of spôn
evolved later, in Middle English.)
Many
other languages used the same *spænu- root for ‘woodchip’. The relevant
one is Old Norse, where a woodchip was a spánn (and that word, by the
way, also evolved into mean the eating utensil). A spann-nyr was a new
chip, recently cut, fresh from the ax, and this came to mean anything brand
new. English adopted that term from Old Norse, and from the 14th through 19th
centuries span-new was used as a term meaning ‘brand new’.
So
much for the wood; what about nails? A spike-nail is a spick. The Dutch
term was similar, and if a ship was brand new they called it spiksplinternieuw
(“spikes and splinters new”; new nails and wood). English, inspired by that
lovely Dutch combination, combined spick with span-new to create spick-and-span-new.
Within less than a century this shortened to spick and span.
kit and caboodle – a miscellaneous assortment
The
usual phrase is whole kit and caboodle, but the ‘whole’ is not
necessary.
The poodle, the pit bull and a kit and
caboodle of creatures eagerly awaiting their next casting call …
– New York Times, Sit, Stay, Fetch, and Don't
Chew the Scenery, Jan. 9, 2006
kit and caboodle is an exuberant version of kit and
boodle. The word kit (and to a lesser degree, caboodle) can
also appear without its partner in the phrase: you can refer to a “kit”, a
“caboodle”, a “whole kit” or “whole caboodle”.
kit – a number of things or persons taken as a whole
kit is especially used for clothing (as in our second quote,
dealing with the dread dilemma of formal attire becoming wrinkled [horrors!]
when packed for travel).
The single best idea Nissan had … was to
perform a manic spring-clean on its dashboard. Buttons and clocks got trimmed
to the minimum and the whole kit was shipped aside on to the
centre console.
– The Guardian, Jan. 14, 2003
How to pack a dinner jacket … keep all your kit
- including black socks, shirt studs, tie and cummerbund - in one place. … Fold
the bottom half of the jacket over shirt and then the bottom half of the
trousers over the folded jacket. This protects the shirt and stops the whole kit
moving around and becoming creased.
– Telegraph, Feb. 19, 2002
caboodle – a crowd or collection
Imagine a movie where every character is
more self-centered than Ted Baxter in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" of
old, add a caboodle of idiotic jokes, and you have some idea of
this ugly, unfunny farce.
– Christian Science Monitor, July 16, 2004
cranny – a small narrow opening or hole; a chink, crevice, crack,
fissure
nook – a secluded, sheltered spot; or, in the same vein, a
small, separate section of a larger room (also, the inner corner formed
by two meeting walls)
As
in the familiar phrase:
every nook and cranny – every part of something.
You’ll
sometimes see a nook without a cranny ("a breakfast nook"),
but has anyone ever seen a cranny without a nook?
I felt like a man who awakens in his own
house and finds all the furniture rearranged, so that every familiar nook
and cranny looks foreign now.
– Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
More surviving fossils
Last
week we looked at words that survive only as part of a familiar 'and' phrase.
Now, dropping the ‘and’, we’ll see some that survive only in a longer word or
phrase.
Our
first word largely disappeared by the start of the 20th century, and has
survived only as a part of the word overwhelm.
whelm – 1. to ruin or destroy by covering completely
(typically with water, but also with earth, snow, etc.) 2. to similarly
engulf or bear down upon (as flood, storm, avalanche) [closer to ‘overwhelm’)
I
do like a another, older sense of this word: ‘to cover with a dish, bowl etc.
turned concave side down’.
… two powerful novels …, one alleging that
the white man’s salvation depends on intermarriage with the negro, the other
declaring that every possible precaution must be taken against the perdition in
which such marriages would whelm the white race …
– New York Times, Apr. 12, 1902
Today’s
fossil word can be an adjective or noun. It survives within two modern words,
one for each of those two senses.
Fossil
word: hoar – 1. adj.: grey or grey-haired, as with age 2.
noun: hoarfrost (see below)
Surviving
words:
hoarfrost (or hoar frost) – a grayish-white
feathery or fernlike deposit of frost
hoary –1. hoar (sense 1; adjective); grey 2. extremely
old, and trite
Some
good authorities say hoary, in the sense of ‘ancient’, is positive in
sense (“so old as to inspire veneration”), but I agree with those who find in
negative, as above. See quotes.
On Thursday, when it starts to freeze
And hoar-frost twinkles on the
trees,
How very readily one sees
That these are whose--but whose are these?
– W. T. Pooh, Lines Written by a Bear of
Very Little Brain, in A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
Their solution wasn't perfect, it was just
better than the hoary alternative, rendering decisions by gut
feeling.
– Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of
Winning an Unfair Game
There is hoary joke among the
clergy¹ that describes a guided tour of heaven.
– Peter J. Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel
of Jesus
¹ suppose I’d better tell the joke. “The
visitor sees the Baptists in one room dancing, which was forbidden on earth;
the Methodists in another room drinking; … and the Roman Catholics in another
large space enjoying guilt without sex [sic]. As they turn a corner and
approach yet another large room, the guide says, ‘We must be quiet now; these
are the Episcopalians, and they think they’re the only ones here.’”
fangled – characterized by silly affectations or by peculiar notions
Even
Shakespeare preferred new-fangled to plain old fangled (three
usages vs. one), and nowadays you’ll rarely see fangled standing alone,
without a prefix of new- or the like. Here are a few of those rare
instances.
I remember with fondness my own tricycle,
capable of tremendous speed or so it seemed then, and because it was not fangled
up by paid imaginations, it could be Pegasus, if I liked, and it was.
– William H. Gass, Mrs. Mean
That’s what you get for eddicating him so much.
It's just what Mr. Allen tells me when I spoke about sending our Jim to high
school. No, he says, none of those high-fangled schools for a son
of mine. I wants ‘em to be workers, not loafers, he says; and he was right.
– Eugene O'Neill, The Personal Equation
(OK, so this one has a hyphenated prefix. So sue me!)
Any
– New York Times, March 24, 2002
fettle – condition or state [from the verb fettle, "to
make ready, arrange"]
Interesting
etymology. The verb fettle "to arrange" is from fetel
"a girdle, belt" (!), which is in turn from *fat- "to
hold" (!!!). I presume this is all in the same family as Old English fætt,
which meant "to cram, stuff”.]
Fettle is familiar from in fine fettle. It’s almost always used
in such positive-adjective phrases: in splendid fettle, in prime fettle,
etc. Here are a few examples without the positive adjective (I can find none
without the “in”):
How to keep a large office force in fettle
is a problem of unusual difficulty in these days of rush.
– Forbes, Nov. 24, 2003
If swarms of summer mosquitoes have put you
in a hot, itchy fettle, let SOS Skin Accidents by
Sanoflore come to the rescue.
– New York Times, July 14, 2006
cahoots – collusion; questionable collaboration
[Origin?
Some suggest French cahute, cabin; others say that in Middle-ages
Interestingly,
OED does not have this word. It's nearly always used in the phrase “in
cahoots,” or the like (some rare exceptions are below), and I’m not sure that
the word was otherwise used in the past.
Nicklaus said … he and [
– The Age (
Where Mason sees indifference or
incompetence, Farrell sees cover-ups and cahoots.
–
Did
you ever notice the weirdness of the word “woebegone”? It seems like you’re saying
a command, “Woe, be gone!”, but that’s not its meaning.
Its
story begins with a word that has been obsolete since about 1500. bego
first meant “to go about, occupy, inhabit”, and then came to mean “to form
one’s environment” or “to influence as one’s environment does”.
1393: He was well begone … with faire
doughters many.
c1386: I was … rich and young and well begon.
(Chaucer)
As
you can see, it could be applied to good environments. But more and more usages
were with bad ones, particular woeful ones, until its only usage was with
“woe”. “Woe” plus “bego” started as two separate words (Chaucer: “So wo
begone a thing was she.”); then a hyphenated word woe-begone,
and finally as a single word woebegone.
woebegone – 1. (obsolete:) beset with woe; oppressed
with misfortune, sorrow, etc. 2. showing distress, misery, anguish, or
grief
A procession was approaching – eleven Mice …
No one has ever seen mice more woebegone than these. They were
plastered with mud – some with blood too — and their ears were down and their
whiskers drooped and their tails dragged in the grass, and their leader piped
on his slender pipe a melancholy tune.
– C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
short shrift – rapid and unsympathetic dismissal; curt treatment
A
very recent example:
Twice in the last six months David Cameron
has written to Gordon Brown challenging him to such a debate during the next
election campaign. On both occasions he's received short shrift.
– Sunday Mirror (
What
is shrift? To shrive was an old religious term meaning to hear
confession (or impose penance, or grant absolution). The noun shrift was
the confession (the penance, the absolution), and one who had confessed and
been absolved had been shriven.
It
seems that when capital punishment was imposed, the authorities allowed the
condemned man a last confession, but would not let him drag it out and
delay execution. Short shrift meant a brief space of time allowed for a
criminal to make his confession before execution. (Shakespeare, Richard III:
“Make a short Shrift, he longs to see your Head.”)¹ From there short shrift
evolved into its current meaning.
¹This is per OED. To be fair, I should add
that Quinion has slightly different slant, at least as I read the two.
Archaic Words
We
follow our themes of “fossil words” with a theme of archaic words. Perhaps
you’ll recall them from reading Shakespeare.
lief – willingly; readily [akin to love] m
Augustana [College] makes no apologies for
its hard-edged approach. "Sure, it was hard to fire people, but we had
fiduciary responsibilities," Dr. Tredway[, president,] said. And, quoting
the church's founder, he added, "Even Luther said he'd as lief
be ruled by a competent Turk as an incompetent Christian."
– New York Times, Nov. 5, 1995
arrant – utter; complete
[originated
as a variant off errant, and sometimes is used where "errant"
is intended. Complicating this, errant had two meanings, from two
different roots: errant – 1. straying from the accepted course or
standards (akin to err and error) 2. traveling in search
of adventure (akin to iter "journey, way”)]
The
word is still commonly seen in one phrase, “arrant nonsense” – so it fits last
week’s theme too. Here’s another example:
However, Souness's half-time motivation and
some arrant complacency turned the match on its head.
– The Independent, Aug. 23, 2001
eftsoons – soon afterward; presently
”Know’st thou who it was thou laid thy
cudgel on?”
“Neither know I, nor care."
"Belike thou'lt change thy note eftsoons.”
– Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper
thorp; thorpe – a village or hamlet
You’ll
see this as a suffix in place names or surnames: -thorp; -thrup. (The
German equivalent is dorf. As in the city of
“Thora of Rimol! Hide me! Hide me!
Danger and shame and death betide me!
For Olaf the King is hunting me down
Through field and forest, through thorp
and town!"
Thus cried Jarl Hakon
To Thora, the fairest of women.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Tales of a
Wayside Inn
Bonus word:
betide – to happen to (transitive); to take place; to befall (intransitive)
whoreson – a low, scurvy fellow (also adj.)
[Origin:
obvious.]
This
luscious word is almost never used (see second quote as a very-rare exception),
except as historical curiousity. Pity. The first quote is long because … well,
because I like it!
Sir John Falstaff, fat rogue, globe of
sinful continents, candle-mine, sweet beef, whoreson round man,
is not a character who requires fleshing-out. Prince Hal's drinking chum can
hardly be made rounder or thirstier. Nor does he present a puzzle: his belly is
his biography. Nevertheless, Robert Nye, a British poet who lives in
Nye's counterfeit turns out to be exactly what it should
be: grossly indelicate, boozily funny, unstoppable as a belch or a rush of sack
to the kidneys.
– Time Magazine, Nov. 8, 1976, reviewing Falstaff
by Robert Nye
This week marks Alex Ferguson's 15th year in
charge of Manchester United. But the mighty team he has built appears to be cracking.
… Times newspaper columnist Simon Barnes … described a frustrated
– CBC Sports, Nov. 5, 2001
Bonus word:
rumbustious – uncontrollably exuberant; unruly
Keep
today’s word in mind when you look at tomorrow’s. They have the same dictionary
definition, but the quotes suggest to me slightly different meanings.
hight – named; called
[from
Old English “to summon”. Related to behest, incite and kinetic.]
He hath three squires that welcome all his
guests;
The first, hight Chamberlino,
who will see
Our beds prepared, and bring us snowy
sheets,
Where never footman stretched his buttered
hams;
The second, hight Tapstero,
who will see
Our pots full filled, and no froth therein;
The third, a gentle squire, Ostlero
hight,
Who will our palfreys slick
with wisps of straw,
And in the manger put them oats enough,
And never grease their teeth with
candle-snuff.
– Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight of the
Burning Pestle (1607; this play, a satire on chivalric romances, is the
first parody play in English)
The
names match the duties. Chamberlino minds the bed-chamber; Tapstero
tends the beer-tap (and isn’t one of those barmen who give you a pint
that’s mostly foam on the top); and Ostlero is the ostler, or
horse-tender.
Bonus archaic words:
hostler; ostler – one who tends horses, especially at an
inn
[related
to host, hotel, hospital and hospitality]
palfrey – a docile horse ridden especially by women
clepe – to call; to name [yclept is the past participle]
This
is the same definition as hight, but based on the usages, my sense is
that hight means to call by name (“Call me Ishmael”), and clepe
means “call” as in “they call him a fool”. Admittedly, some of my readers have
disagreed with me on this.
Hamlet
notes that other nations think ill of his countrymen's fondness for strong
drink:
The King … keeps wassail, and … drains his
draughts of Rhenish down …
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduc'd and tax'd of other
nations:
They clepe us drunkards …
Para-words
Recall
our recent word palfrey (“a docile horse ridden especially by
women", as distinguished from a warhorse”). The pal- part
comes from Greek para- "beside, secondary"; thus at root a palfrey,
a woman’s horse, was a “secondary” horse. Tells you something about the status
of women.
Many
para- words have an obvious connection with “beside” or
“secondary": paramedic and like terms (paranormal, paralegal,
paramilitary), parallel and even parenthetical. This week
we'll look at ones where the connection is less obvious.
We’ll
begin with one which, like palfrey, is originally rooted in the status
of women. Until 1882, English law provided when a woman married her property
automatically became owned by her husband. He could sell it without her
consent, and upon his death it would pass to his heirs, not to hers. There was
one exception: the rule did not apply to miscellaneous, personal items, such as
jewelry or clothing, which remained her property. (My understanding the English
gave women less rights than did laws derived from the Romans, where her
"retained property" included the furniture she brought with her.)
This
miscellaneous property she had “besides her dowry” was given a name from the
Greek para- “beside” + pherne “dowry”. It was called paraphernalia.
paraphernalia – miscellaneous articles, especially the equipment
needed for a particular activity
An acquaintance inflicted the gift of a
piranha with appropriate aquarium and paraphernalia on me. For
six or seven months now I have had to put up with the gurgling water, whirring
motors, and the uneasy feeling that I am a potential meal.
– William F. Buckley, Cancel Your Own
Goddam Subscription: Notes & Asides from National Review
parable – a story told to convey a moral or spiritual lesson
[from
the concept of a story with a meaning that “stands beside” its facts of its
plot]
It
can get a bit extreme, though.
But do the books [by Dr. Seuss] have a
hidden meaning? Some anti-abortion rights groups have interpreted the book
"Horton Hears a Who" as an anti-abortion parable.
Horton the elephant discovers a whole town of tiny people living on a speck of
dust. Horton makes it his mission to protect his new friends, declaring his
intention with the famous line: "A person's a person no matter how
small."
– ABC News, March 16, 2008 (ellipses
omitted)
paraplegia – paralysis of the legs, the lower body [The sufferer
is a paraplegic.]
An
interesting shift in meanings. The original Greek word meant what we now call hemiplegia:
“paralysis on one side”: παρα- para- “beside” + “to
strike”. By the time it came from Greek through Latin to English, it had
changed to mean “any paralysis;” it later settled down to mean “lower body
paralysis”.
Melanie Trevethick wheeled herself into the
High Court, to make a political point [that] government policy discriminates
against people like her. Because she became disabled through illness, she is
entitled to less help from the state than had she driven drunk, wrapped herself
around a power pole, and become a paraplegic. Then, ACC
would have remodelled her home to accommodate her wheelchair, bought her an
adapted vehicle and paid her 80 per cent of her former income. Instead, she is
eligible only for a welfare benefit for income and considerably less taxpayer
assistance with some expenses. The discrepancies are obvious and, on the face
of it, unconscionable.
– Dominion Post (
Today,
a familiar word which literally means “beside one’s mind”, para-
"beside, beyond" + noos "mind".
paranoia – any unjustified, excessive fear of the actions or
motives of others (medical sense: a persistent delusional system,
usually on the theme of persecution or exaggerated personal importance)
A
movie titled 21 is currently playing. But the book from which it’s taken
(the sources of our quote) has a more revealing title, Bringing Down the
House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, by
Ben Mezrich
Andrew Tay became the “donkey boy,” carrying
most of the stash taped to his body. In this role, his paranoia
came in handy; he carried the bags of money if they were filled with unstable
explosives, and worked his way through airport security with a drug smuggler’s
intensity.
The
origin of today’s word is clear, once you know that -philia means
“love”. The word is defined by our quote, where a witness testifies in court.
“Tell the jury about
your expertise,”
“Well, I am the
director of the Psychohormonal Research Laboratory at USC. …. I have conducted
wide-ranging studies of sexual practice, paraphilia and
psychosexual dynamics."
"What is a paraphilia,
doctor? In language we will all understand, please.”
“Well, in layman’s
terms, paraphilia are what are commonly referred to by the
general public as sexual perversions – sexual behavior generally considered
unacceptable by society.”
“Such as strangling
you sex partner?”
“Yes, that would be
one of them, big time.
There was a polite
murmur of humor in the courtroom.
– Michael Connelly, The Concrete Blonde
Ah,
happy coincidence! Yesterday, while reading, I happened on a word that fits
this week’s theme. Quite obscure: it’s not in any on-line dictionary, not in
OED, not in Bailey’s or in Mrs. Bryne’s dictionary. But amazon has enough hits
to convince me that it’s a legitimate word.
Context:
Medical learning was limited for centuries because no one could study a human
cadaver by dissecting it. Religion forbade human dissection, so the
professionals instead relied on the conventional wisdom that a pig would do. A
medical student in about the year 1050 is told:
”The pig‘s organs are identical to the
organs of man. … So it has been written since the time of Galen, whose fellow
Greeks would not let him cut up humans. The Jews and the Christians have a
similar prohibition. All men share this abhorrence of dissection.”
[The student asks if perhaps earlier
ancients have left wisdom obtained by dissections.]
“I have gone back in
time,” Yussuf said. “Far as I am able. Into antiquity. Even the Egyptians …
were taught it is evil and a disfigurement of the dead to open the abdomen.”
But … when they made
their mummies?”
“They were
hypocrites. They paid despised men called pararschistes to sin by
making the forbidden initial incision. As soon as they made the cut the pararschistes
fled lest they be stoned to death, an acknowledgement of guilt…
– Noah Gordon, The Physician
The
para- part is familiar, and I’d imagine that the schite means “to
split”, akin to schism and schizophrenia. Thus a paraschite
is one who “cuts the side”.
(And
by the way, I believe the stoning of paraschites was purely ceremonial,
a ritual formality to punish the “sin” committed.)
paraschite (or pararschiste) – person hired to cut a body, for
mummification
1865: Eugene Rimmel, The Book of Perfumes:
One of the most curious parts of the performance was that the paraschistes,
or dissector, who had to make an incision in the body, ran away as soon as it
was done, amid the bitter execrations of all those present, who pelted him with
stones, to testify their abhorrence of any one inflicting injury on a human
creature, either alive or dead.
The
word was apparently coined in a description of mummification written by an
ancient Greek writer, Diodorus Siculus. It looks like the French took the term
from him before the English did.
Today
we honor April Fool’s Day. A burlesque or spoof of a song (an ode) would
be a para-ode. That word, in ancient Greek, gave us today’s word.
parody – a literary composition imitating (and esp. one
satirizing) another work. Also, by extension: a poor or feeble
imitation; a travesty
It looks like a typical National Geographic
cover … . So what's Paris Hilton doing on there? The folks at Harvard Lampoon
persuaded employees of one of the most respected magazines to help them ensure
their April Fool's parody — with stories on
– International Herald Tribune, April 1,
2008
Happy
April Fool’s Day!