WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 661 Saturday 17 October 2009 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Sent each Saturday to at least 50,000 subscribers by e-mail and RSS Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448 http://www.worldwidewords.org US advisory editor: Julane Marx ------------------------------------------------------------------- A formatted version of this e-magazine is available online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/puqo.htm To leave the list or change your subscribed email address, see Section A below or go to http://wwwords.org?SUBS. Don't e-mail me with subscription matters unless you are having problems. This e-magazine is best viewed in a fixed-pitch font. For a key to phonetic symbols, see http://wwwords.org?PRON Contents ------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. L-Soft Choice Award. 2. Feedback, notes and comments. 3. Turns of Phrase: Pico-projector. 4. Weird Words: Garth. 5. What I've learned this week. 6. Q and A: Monkey wrench. 7. Sic! A. Subscription information. B. E-mail contact addresses. C. Ways to support World Wide Words. 1. L-Soft Choice Award ------------------------------------------------------------------- You may recall that voting for the award ended in April with World Wide Words receiving 33,683 votes, ICORS 26,373 votes and IWMF-TALK 4,209 votes. The grand award was to be given to the one of these three finalists that the judges felt was the "most successful and beneficial e-mail list or campaign". World Wide Words did not win the top prize; it has gone to ICORS, a voluntary charitable group that offers support to people in need of help, a worthy winner to whom we all wish every success. L-Soft has created a special prize - The Timeless Award - for World Wide Words to mark the value of its work and the 15th anniversary of L-Soft. The L-Soft newsletter commented that "The award's title captures the timeless appeal and power of cohesion of email lists that World Wide Words embodies." Thanks go to everybody on this list who voted for World Wide Words during the contest last winter. I greatly value your support and expressions of good feelings about the e-magazine and the Web site. Special thanks are due to the managers and staff of the Linguist List at Eastern Michigan University (a particular tip of the hat to Anthony Aristar and Susan Smith) who run the list server and who have very kindly hosted World Wide Words on their system for more than a decade without asking for payment (though I'm very pleased to make a voluntary contribution each year to their appeal for student support funds). The announcement of the award is at http://wwwords.org?LCTA. 2. Feedback, notes and comments ------------------------------------------------------------------- GRASP THE NETTLE Lots of people wrote about this item, mostly to comment on the old saw about not being stung if you grasp a nettle firmly. Richard Oliver wrote: "The botanical lore is absolutely right. When I was a child we had lots of stinging nettles and we soon learnt how to deal with them. What I think happens is that you break off the stinging hairs before they penetrate the skin. But you do have to be quick and determined." Others, including Laura Perry, vehemently denied its truth: "I can tell you from painful experience that regardless of the manner in which one grasps the [expletive deleted] plant, it hurts. A lot. For quite a while afterward. I can only guess that the concept of grasping the plant firmly being less painful grew out of some sort of show-off attempt at bravery, because it's patently untrue." Jen Kirby and others noted that "grasp" here surely means "crush a leaf between your finger and thumb". She wrote, "I would not grab a nettle in my fist. Part of the plant would be sure to brush against my skin and sting me." Among silly British pub contests, there must surely be none dafter than the World Stinging Nettle Eating Challenge, which is run each summer at the Bottle Inn, Marshwood, Dorset (see their Web site via http://wwwords.org?WSNE). Mike Hoke and Colin Hague told me about it. The latter wrote: "Apparently the secret (I haven't tested it personally, you understand) is to put the raw nettle stalks in your mouth confidently, taking utmost care that they do not touch your lips. The iron content turns competitors' tongues black - and causes certain other physiological symptoms." Let's not go there. On a language point, William Lauriston note, "In Dublin, at least up to the 1960s, we called scrumping 'boxing the fox'. All Google turned up was a page that at least verifies that it was used - but perhaps it was a local turn of phrase?" Perhaps not. Among the few printed references is an anecdote in Lord Campbell's The Lives of the Lord Chancellors (1850) about Lord Eldon, who was born in Newcastle, in which Eldon remembers, "I do not know how it was, but we always considered robbing an orchard - 'boxing the fox' as we called it - as an honourable exploit." The earliest is in an issue of The European Magazine, dated 1799, though that was about the actor and playwright Charles Macklin, who was Irish. It seems to have died out early in the nineteenth century except in Ireland. Even there, a report of 1916 suggests it was known mainly around Dublin. Where the idiom comes from is unknown. 3. Turns of Phrase: Pico-projector ------------------------------------------------------------------- It's a video projector, but a very small one that will sit in the palm of your hand or fit comfortably in your pocket. It can be used as a portable business projector, but the small size of the displayed picture - claimed to be a maximum of 60in (150cm) wide in excellent viewing conditions - means it's really designed as an entertainment product to enable people to view video from their laptops, phones, digital cameras, iPods and other personal devices. The terminology hasn't settled down yet and other terms for the device exist, including "palmtop projector", "palm projector" and, the oldest one, "pocket projector". "Pico-projector" first appeared around 2003 but products with that name have only recently reached a performance level that makes them attractive. Its first part, "pico-", is an example of the figurative broadening in meaning of a prefix of size with a precise meaning: a millionth millionth of some unit. In cases such as this one and "picocell", a very small area of coverage in a wireless network, it loosely means something tiny of its type. * Guardian, 24 Aug. 2009: Look for pico projectors to make their way into a wide range of other devices. Nikon has just announced a digital camera with one built-in, and mobile phone manufacturers are looking to add the technology to smart phones. In the not-so- distant future, if you want to show a presentation you will be able to leave not only the projector back at the office, but the laptop as well. * Sunday Times, 9 Aug. 2009: What is it? The first digital camera with a built-in pico projector - a tiny, front-mounted system that throws photos or videoclips onto any flat surface at up to 40in wide, depending on how far from the wall you hold the camera. 4. Weird Words: Garth /gA:T/ ------------------------------------------------------------------- If you should find yourself one day in the cloisters of a cathedral or monastery, at least in Britain, you need not be lost for a word to identify the open courtyard it encloses: it's a garth. Strictly speaking, it's a contraction, of "cloister-garth". There were once many such compounds, such as "apple-garth" (an orchard), "fish-garth" (an enclosure on a river or seashore for trapping or storing fish), "church-garth" (a churchyard), "willow-garth" (a field where willows or osiers are grown), "stack-garth" (a rick- yard, an enclosed space for storing stacks of hay, straw and other produce), "vine-garth" (a vineyard), and "fold-garth" (a farmyard). You can work out "cabbage-garth" for yourself. As you will have gathered, "garth" was once a very broad term. It could mean almost any patch of enclosed ground used for a specific purpose, such as a yard, garden, field or paddock. It appeared in the northern parts of Britain in the fourteenth century and derives from Old Norse "garšr", a yard or courtyard. Through Old English it's related to "yard" in similar senses, and also to "garden". "Garth" is now rare except in British place names or historical or poetical writing. The personal name comes from the same source, as it originally referred to somebody who lived near an enclosure, especially a paddock or orchard. 5. What I've learned this week ------------------------------------------------------------------- TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE TWINK It's amazing what you can learn from e-mail error messages. The issue last week was blocked by one site in the UK because it had a rude word in the message body. Do you recall reading any rude words? I don't remember writing any. It transpired that the offending "word" was in the title of a nursery rhyme I listed: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. The filtering system spotted the first five letters of the first word and pounced. I had to look it up: TWINK is gay slang (I quote Wikipedia) for "a young or young-looking gay man (usually white and in his late teens or early twenties) with a slender build, little or no body hair, and no facial hair." SUPER? A tremendous fuss has erupted in Britain this week as the result of an injunction obtained by a famous firm of libel lawyers, Carter-Ruck. It sought to ban the Guardian from publishing details of a report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast by a firm named Trafigura. It also persuaded the judge to make the injunction secret, so the newspaper couldn't even report it existed. Such measures have become known as SUPER-INJUNCTIONS; they are becoming more common as a way of stifling the reporting of issues, as part of what is known as REPUTATION MANAGEMENT for big companies. The injunction became controversial when Carter-Ruck claimed it prevented press coverage of a question in the House of Commons that mentioned it. As parliamentary business enjoys what's called ABSOLUTE PRIVILEGE, meaning that nothing said in the Chamber and reported outside it carries any risk of legal challenge - a prerogative that goes back to the Bill of Rights of 1689 - this gagging attempt provoked a storm of protest, mainly online, which forced the firm to withdraw its objections. POOR IMITATION For some reason, I haven't previously come across the term FAUXTEUR. The Urban Dictionary defines it as "A filmmaker, usually a director, who makes cheesy, derivative, or unoriginal movies." So it's clearly a combination of "faux" and "auteur". It has been around at least since 2005. The New York Times suggested in 2006 that it was a coinage of the Web site defamer.com. Best I not name any of the people it's been attached to, or Carter-Ruck may be after me. 6. Q and A: Monkey wrench ------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. I queried World Wide Words for the origin of the term "monkey wrench". You make a passing reference to this tool under "lead-pipe cinch" [see http://wwwords.org?LDPC], but you have nothing on "monkey wrench" itself. Wikipedia has a brief description of the origin of the name, from inventor Charles Moncky, but it seems all too pat, like Thomas Crapper and the flush toilet [for more on this see http://wwwords.org?CPPR]. What does the learned Dr. Quinion have to say on the matter? [Dennis Glanzman] A. The occasionally well-informed Mr Quinion has some interesting facts to impart but comes, as so often, to no clear conclusion. The source has long been a puzzle and has given rise to many tries at explaining it. A contributor to American Speech in 1930 pointed out that a precursor to the device a century earlier was called a key wrench and suggested that its successor was at first called the non-key wrench. In 1931, another writer in the same journal noted that he had "years ago", read an account "to the effect that this useful tool was invented by an English man named Mon(c)k." Around 1932-33 a report appeared in the Transcript of Boston asserting that an American by the name of Monk employed by Bernis & Call of Springfield, Massachusetts, invented the device, which became known by his name. This is an earlier assertion of a similar origin: Charles Monckey, inventor of the Monckey wrench (wrongfully called monkey wrench), is living in poverty in Brooklyn. He sold the patent for $2000, and now millions are made annually out of the invention. [Galveston Daily News (Texas), 23 Oct. 1886. Similarly worded snippets appeared around the same time in the Chicago Evening Journal, the Weekly Detroit Free Press and the Atchison Daily Globe, among others.] One of the editors at the OED tells me that they have in their files a letter dated as early as 1893 expressing scepticism about such theories; he also points out that the tool is referred to as a monkey wrench years before suggestions of an origin in a proper name appeared. As all such suggestions come without evidence to support them, and nobody has since found any, we have to assume they are hearsay or folk etymology. In 1973, E Surrey Dane published a book with the snappy title Peter Stubs and the Lancashire Hand Tool Industry, which has a reference dated 1807 to a firm supplying "Screw plates, lathes, clock engines ... monkey wrenches, taps." The entry in the online Oxford English Dictionary includes this but with a question mark before the date, which means that their editors have yet to verify it beyond doubt. There's then a big gap until it turns up in Francis Whishaw's The Railways of Great Britain and Ireland, dated 1840, in which he quotes Orders to Enginemen and Firemen issued by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, dated 1837, which includes a list of tools that must be kept in a locomotive cab, including "one large and one small monkey wrench". This reference shows that the term was then common enough not to need explaining. The term was first used in print in the US - so far as I can discover - in an issue of the Natchez Daily Courier for 1838. This dating evidence says nothing about the true origin. As matters stand we can't even be sure which country invented it. It seems most likely that the explanation is very simple: that the jaws of the wrench reminded some early user of the face of a monkey. 7. Sic! ------------------------------------------------------------------- Power of life and death: David Grossman was adding a subscriber to an online group he manages when he received the message "Pending members require your approval. If you take no action, they will automatically expire after 14 days." Kate Archdeacon wrote from Melbourne: "We have been hunting for a new rental property for several weeks now, and it has become quite difficult to choose from the fairly generic descriptions. Obviously this one, from the Domain real estate section of our local paper, The Age, is therefore very tempting: 'Space Galore and Freshly Painted-Gardener Incuded'." ["Incuded" is also an error.] An article on the Web site of The Red and Black, a University of Georgia student newspaper, caused Lisa Robinton to cry "eek!". She had encountered the sentence, "For fall semester last year, the dining hall menu contained 12 items that were reformulated to incorporate vegan students." Dave Hay wrote from Houston, Texas: "In a Borders store in Glasgow I found a poster for Richard Branson's new autobiography. [A photo is in the online edition.] Sarah Cahill, the Non-Fiction Buyer of Borders, was quoted, 'The ultimate entrepreneur combines invaluable advice with the remarkable and candid insite stories of Virgins, greatest achievements, as well as some of it's setbacks. This is a dynamic, inspirational guide to success in business and in life.'" The poster, on the other hand, is hardly an advertisement for British punctuation and spelling. A. Subscription information ------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the list, change your subscription address or resubscribe, please visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/index.htm . You can also maintain your subscription by e-mail. For a list of commands, send this message to listserv@listserv.linguistlist.org: INFO WORLDWIDEWORDS This e-magazine is also available as an RSS feed, whose source is at http://www.worldwidewords.org/rss/newsletter.xml . Back issues are at http://www.worldwidewords.org/backissues/ . B. E-mail contact addresses ------------------------------------------------------------------- * Comments on e-magazine mailings are always welcome. They should be sent to me at wordseditor@worldwidewords.org . I do try to respond, but pressures of time often prevent me from doing so. * Items for "Sic!" should go to wordsclangers@worldwidewords.org . Submissions will not usually be acknowledged. * Questions intended to be answered in the Q and A section should be addressed to wordsquestions@worldwidewords.org (please don't use this address to respond to published answers to questions - e-mail the comment address instead). * Problems with subscriptions that cannot be handled by the list server should be addressed to wordssubs@worldwidewords.org . To allow me more time for researching material, please don't e-mail me asking for simple subscription changes you can do yourself. C. Ways to support World Wide Words ------------------------------------------------------------------- The World Wide Words e-magazine and Web site are free, but if you would like to help with their costs, there are several ways to do so. Visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/support.htm for details. ------------------------------------------------------------------- World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2009. All rights reserved. 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