WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 610 Saturday 25 October 2008 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 newsletter is available online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/synm.htm The newsletter is best viewed in a fixed-pitch font. For a key to phonetic symbols, see http://wwwords.org?PRON Contents ------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Feedback, notes and comments. 2. Weird Words: Fuliginous. 3. Vote for World Wide Words. 4. Q&A: In-laws. 5. Review: Chambers Slang Dictionary. 6. Sic! A. Subscription information. B. E-mail contact addresses. C. Ways to support World Wide Words. 1. Feedback, notes and comments ------------------------------------------------------------------- A SPECIAL WELCOME to everybody who joined the mailing list this week following a mention by William Safire of my book Port Out, Starboard Home in the New York Times last weekend and of World Wide Words in the Good Morning Silicon Valley newsletter on Wednesday. UPDATES Three pieces on the Web site have been updated with fresh information. The three are on the British slang term "mullered" (go via the link http://wwwords.org?MULL), on "nitty-gritty" (follow http://wwwords.org?NYTY) and which is right, "predominately" or "predominantly" (http://wwwords.org?PRED). 2. Weird Words: Fuliginous /fju:'lIdZIn@s/ fju{lm}{sm}l{shti}d{zh}{shti}n{schwa}s ------------------------------------------------------------------- Sooty. The diarist John Evelyn wrote in 1661 about the smoke of coal fires in London that "Her Inhabitants breathe nothing but an impure and thick Mist, accompanied with a fuliginous and filthy vapour ... corrupting the Lungs, and disordering the entire habit of their bodies, so that Catharrs, Phthisicks, Coughs and Consumptions rage more in this one City than in the whole Earth besides." "Fuliginous" can also refer to a sooty or dusky colour ("the whole body is of a rather light fuliginous or brownish grey", which is in a description of the bird called Bonaparte's shearwater) or to some noxious vapour said in old medical texts to be formed by combustion within the body and which particularly affected the head ("It is not amiss to bore the skull with an instrument to let out the fuliginous vapours" - The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton.) The word is from Latin "fuligo", soot, which has also been used in English with the same meaning. "Fuligo ligni" is the Latin name for wood soot, a form of charcoal; it used to be listed in the British Pharmacopoeia as an antispasmodic, for instance to help with the treatment of whooping cough. 3. Vote for World Wide Words ------------------------------------------------------------------- L-Soft, creators of the LISTSERV mailing list software on which the World Wide Words newsletter is distributed, runs biennial Choice Awards, which it calls a "worldwide recognition program for email list communication excellence." The World Wide Words newsletter has been nominated for the 2008-09 awards and with your support could win, though we're running a bad second at the moment. Do visit the awards site and vote (go via http://wwwords.org?LCAS). Though there are some restrictions on voting, the old election Irishism applies: "vote early, vote often". 4. Q&A: In-laws ------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. In Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Snawley refers to himself as "father- in-law" of two boys he palms off to Mr. Squeers' miserable school. As we would refer to him as their step-father, I was wondering if the latter term is relatively new and whether "in-laws" for the spouse's family is a recent term as well. [Mitch Kramer, Vermont] A. Dickens is very clear about the meaning of the term. Mr Snawley says, "The fact is, I am not their father, Mr Squeers. I'm only their father-in-law" and goes on to say, "You see, I have married the mother." The law here is Canon Law, specifically the rules of affinity that prohibit marriage between relatives. At one time, the rules not only stopped blood relatives from marrying, but also relatives in which the only connection was one through marriage. The most famous case was that at one time a man could not marry his deceased wife's sister or a woman her dead husband's brother. The sister of a man's dead wife was considered as much off limits for marriage as if she were his own sister - she was a sister "in law". (In the UK, such unions were explicitly made legal by Parliament early last century, as was marriage to the children of either - one's niece or nephew by marriage.) All these "-in-law" forms came into the language in the fourteenth century. For several centuries, they could also be applied to other relationships created by marriage. A daughter-in-law or son-in-law could be the child of a spouse from a previous marriage, since they were also covered by the Canon Law rules. As Dickens makes clear, the reverse relationship of father-in-law was often applied to what we would now call a step-father. The "step-" prefix has had a mixed history. The source is an old Germanic word that could mean bereaved or orphaned (in Old English, a stepchild or stepbairn was an orphan). "Stepfather", "stepmother" and "stepdaughter" are much older than the "-in-law" equivalents, known from Anglo-Saxon times, with "stepbrother", "stepson", and "stepsister" coming along much later. However, Dr Johnson noted in his Dictionary in 1755 that only "stepmother" was in common use. The position shifted in the early to middle nineteenth century for unknown reasons, with the "-in-law" endings coming to be reserved for relationships wholly created by marriage and the "step-" ones coming into much wider use for those where a relationship existed beforehand between one's partner and another person. Around the same time, we start to see new "step-" forms appearing, such as "stepfamily", "step-parent", "step-nephew" (surprisingly old, in a novel by Bulwer-Lytton of 1857) and "step-niece" (from about 1890), showing how deeply the change had penetrated into the language. 5. Review: Chambers Slang Dictionary ------------------------------------------------------------------- Jonathon Green's name is familiar to every student of slang in the UK: he has been researching it for 25 years and is an authority on this most intriguing and intractable aspect of lexicography. The title makes it seem as though this is an entirely new book but in essence it is the third edition of the Cassell Dictionary of Slang. The change of publisher has resulted in subtle changes in layout and content. Most significantly, entries have been presented in a different way - derivatives of a word are placed together as sub-entries of the main word, rather than as individual entries. This technique, called nesting in the business, may seem a small change, even a fussy one, but it simplifies entries and highlights the relationships between terms. The opportunity has been taken to add items of recent slang, to rewrite definitions and improve the dating. To my eye - though this is a subjective view - the text is clearer and easier to read. Slang being the seamy underside of language, you shouldn't expect a positive view of life to emerge from its pages. Jonathon Green has computed (using his huge database of material that will some year soon form the basis of his magnum opus, an OED of slang) that among this book's 85,000 words and phrases from throughout the English- speaking world are 5,012 entries for crime and criminals, 4,589 for intoxicating liquor and its effects (with 3,976 more on drugs), 3,343 for money, 1,365 for penis, (and 1,131 for vagina), 1,740 for sexual intercourse, 945 for masturbation, 831 for death and dying and 219 for vomiting, but "sweet FA" for anything caring, sharing or compassionate. [Jonathon Green, Chambers Slang Dictionary, published by Chambers Harrap on 24 October 2008; hardback, pp1477; ISBN-13:978-0550- 10439-7, ISBN-10:0550104399, publisher's list price GBP30.00.] AMAZON PRICES FOR THIS BOOK Amazon UK: GBP16.25 http://wwwords.org?CSD1 Amazon Canada: CDN$50.54 http://wwwords.org?CSD5 Amazon Germany: EUR42,99 http://wwwords.org?CSD7 [Please use these links to buy. They get World Wide Words a small commission at no extra cost to you.] 6. Sic! ------------------------------------------------------------------- I went to have my flu jab last Saturday at a temporary Clinic C in my doctor's surgery. The practice operates a computerised check-in, which confirmed I had an appointment with a "Ms Flu C". The nurse in charge, I am pleased to report, was utterly unfloozy. We haven't had an inscrutable translation of Chinese instructions for a while. Vincent Murphy bought a flashlight, one of the cheap sort whose handle you squeeze to charge it. The notes on the side of the box read in part, "Constantly using this health torch, it can benefit to your palm, arm and shoulder stretching and blood circulation, so as to let your hands relax and brain clever, hand and brain coor dinate and promote your brain memory and health compostion." How true, even today. Brendan Hale was browsing the BBC News Web site from Taiwan last Sunday morning when he noticed a ticker headline: "Flash floods triggered by heavy rains kill at least seven people dead in central Vietnam". He says he's not sure whether he should be relieved or scared that there's a non-deadly version of being killed. The chalked board outside a cafe in Exmouth in Devon, Peter Kay reports, offers a mega breakfast and a small mega breakfast. 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 newsletter is also available as an RSS feed. For the details, visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/rss/newsletter.xml . Back issues are at http://www.worldwidewords.org/backissues/ . B. E-mail contact addresses ------------------------------------------------------------------- * Comments on newsletter 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&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 with simple subscription changes. C. Ways to support World Wide Words ------------------------------------------------------------------- The World Wide Words newsletter 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 2008. All rights reserved. The Words Web site is at http://www.worldwidewords.org . ------------------------------------------------------------------- You may reproduce this newsletter in whole or part in free online newsletters, newsgroups or mailing lists provided that you include the copyright notice above. Reproduction in printed publications or on Web sites or blogs needs prior permission, for which you should contact the editor at wordseditor@worldwidewords.org . -------------------------------------------------------------------