The virtual linguist

Chewing the carpet

I've heard or seen the idiom 'chewing the carpet' a couple of times today (eg here) in connection with Gordon Brown as a candidate for head of the IMF. The Guardian article just linked to has the sentence: "A more intriguing UK outsider, in every sense – and absolutely guaranteed to have Brown chewing the carpet – is Peter Mandelson".

 

Chew, or chewing, the carpet is not in the OED but it is in Jonathon Green's Dictionary of Slang. Green describes it as being US slang from the 1950s and defines it as 'to lose emotional control, to have a temper tantrum'.

 

Do not confuse 'chewing the carpet' with 'chewing the rug'. That's not in the OED, although 'chewing the rag' is, but both phrases (rag/rug) are in Green's dictionary and in the late 19th century meant 'to gossip' or 'to chatter'.

 

Do not confuse 'chewing the carpet' with being 'on the carpet', which is a late-19th century US expression meaning 'about to face a reprimand'.

Spanish practices

The rail unions have been in the news lately - for threatening strikes, for one thing, and for another because the government wants to reform the railways and bring in new working practices. In stories about labour disputes and trade unions (such as this one) the term 'Spanish practices' is often used. It refers to irregular working practices that have been negotiated by the unions at some point in the past (examples here).

 

Although 'Spanish practices' is not a politically correct term and upsets many Spaniards, no slur is intended on the Spanish or their ways of working. It is a phrase used to criticise British workers. It is a very old expression in English and dates back to the rivalry between the Spanish and the English in the 16th century.

 

'Spanish practices' is not in the OED as a headword or a section in itself, but it is in a citation under 'Spanish'. The 1584 (a few years before the Spanish Armada) citation is: "The French king‥will mislike, that, by any Spanish practice, she should be drawn to violate her faith". The OED says that Spanish here means 'deceitful, perfidious or treacherous'.

 

A synonym of 'Spanish practices' is 'an old Spanish custom' although this is rarely used these days. That expression dates back less than a hundred years, and the OED defines it as a jocular phrase used when justifying a long-standing practice which is unauthorised or otherwise irregular.

 

Given the centuries-old history of wars and rivalry between England and Spain, insults or negative words have occasionally made reference to Spain or the Spanish. Spanish pox or Spanish gout was syphilis in the 16th/17th centuries and Francis Grose, in his Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, has Spanish padlock being a chastity belt, and Spanish trumpeter being a braying ass. The English didn't single out the Spanish when it came to pejorative words. French compliment, French disease, French evil, French goods, French measles and French marbles have all been used as synonyms for syphilis and a French crown was the baldness associated with syphilis - Shakespeare uses it in A Midsummer Night's Dream. A French synonym for syphilis, incidentally, is la maladie anglaise, or the English disease, and I remember that when I studied in Russia in the 1970s they used the term 'English flu' for syphilis. No matter where you are in the world, foreigners get the blame for the evils in society!

Spitting in the soup

There was a piece on Radio 4's Today programme this morning about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in cycling. The story centred on Joe Papp, a former professional cyclist who is shortly due to face charges of drug-taking and -dealing. There's a similar written article on the BBC website, with a link to the radio interview.

 

When Papp was caught taking drugs he decided, as the article says 'to fold rather than fight'. 'Fold' here means 'give up, yield'; it comes from the poker term to fold, ie to lay down your hand and give up.

 

There are hardly any mentions of 'spitting in the soup' on English Google pages, but there are a lot for the French equivalent 'cracher dans la soupe' on google.fr. It is usually translated into English as 'bite the hand that feeds you'. In this cycling and doping story, Papp admitted his guilt, didn't try to fight it, and co-operated with the authorities, even though this turned his team-mates against him. He turned his back on cycling and his team mates, even though these had supported him and given him his livelihood in the past. This is 'spitting in the soup'.

Perp walk

The American lawyer Gerald Lefcourt had to explain to the British interviewer on the BBC radio evening programme PM what was meant by the term 'perp walk' when he used it on-air (listen again for another week here - it's about 32 mins in).

 

Lefcourt said that he and many others were appalled at the treatment meted out by the police to Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Strauss-Kahn has not been tried or convicted, but the police have allowed the media to see him in handcuffs and looking dishevelled and unshaven after hours of questioning. This is what is meant by a perp walk, where perp is short for perpetrator. Lefcourt regards this as unethical behaviour and that it can affect a jury's attitude, as it gives the impression of a guilty person.

 

Although we do not use the expression 'perp walk' in Britain, it is in the OED. It is under the entry for 'perp'. The definition of 'perp walk' in the Dictionary is: "a march into or out of a police car, courthouse, etc., that a person in police custody is made to perform for the benefit of the news media". It is described as US slang, and the first recorded citation is from 1986. The first mention of 'perp' on its own was a few years earlier, in 1981.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn and cliches

I've only listened to about five minutes of news on the radio today but in that time I have heard a number of clichés being used to refer to head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is headline news today.

 

He was described as a champagne socialist, and also by the French equivalent - gauche caviar, or 'caviar left'. These pejorative terms refer to leftwingers with plenty of money and a taste for the good things of life to boot. Another French term used on the BBC's one o'clock bulletin was chaud lapin or 'hot rabbit', which evokes quite a different picture to the English equivalents ladies' man or Don Juan.

 

The slightly more erudite phrase 'a Metternich with a BlackBerry' was used in both the eight o'clock and one o'clock bulletins put out on BBC Radio 4. This is a reference to the important 19th-century German-Austrian diplomat Klemens von Metternich. Strauss-Kahn is also said to have used masterful skills of diplomacy to persuade the IMF to bail out debt-ridden countries in Europe.

 

Lastly, Professor Ngaire Woods of Oxford University used a phrase in an interview just after the eight o'clock news bulletin this morning on the BBC Today programme. Considering the situation from an American perspective, she described the idea of a European running an organisation whose biggest borrower was Europe as being like 'a fox in charge of the hen-house'.

Chance your arm

While sightseeing in St Patrick's cathedral in Dublin the other day, the guide told us that an incident in the cathedral gave rise to the phrase 'chance your arm', which means to take a risk or have a go, even though the likelihood of success is slim.

 

One of the sights on display in the cathedral is a solid wooden door with a rectangular hole cut out of it (see picture here). It is called the Door of Reconciliation because it featured in a dispute between two of Ireland's most wealthy and influential Anglo-Irish families - the Butlers (Earls of Ormond) and the Fitzgeralds (Earls of Kildare). Sir James Ormond locked himself and some guards in the chapter house of the cathedral to take sanctuary. His enemy, the Earl of Kildare, tried to get him to negotiate a truce, but Sir James refused. Eventually Kildare cut a hole in the door and thrust his arm through. Luckily, Sir James inside shook the hand, rather than cut off his foe's arm! Wikipedia says that this event happened in 1492, but A Compendium of Irish Biography says it was 1512.

 

The linking of the event to the idiom 'chance your arm' makes a good story, but it is unlikely to be true. The first recorded use of the phrase in print in the OED is 1889, well after the event that is supposed to have spawned it. This phrase refers to a tailoring context. An 1899 citation explains the phrase as meaning 'to risk a court-martial' and lose your stripes (on the sleeve of your uniform). Moreover, although the Butlers (Ormond) were more 'Anglo' than Irish, the Fitzgeralds spoke and wrote Irish (see paragraph 331 of this page). It is not known which language the two men spoke through the hole in the door - but it may not have been English and probably did not include the words 'chance' and 'arm'.

Slut

The word 'slut' arouses strong emotions, and is almost always intended to be an insult. A piece on the BBC website earlier this week looked at the word and the images it evokes.

 

A police officer in Canada aroused the wrath of many women when he advised women not to dress like sluts if they wanted to minimise their chances of being attacked. The protests evolved into 'SlutWalks' in North America, and similar events are planned to take place in Britain. The idea is that women reclaim the word 'slut' just as the gay community has reclaimed the word 'queer'. Once a word is reclaimed like this, the sting goes out of it. After all, there is no point in using what you consider to be an insulting word against a person or group of people, if they use that word about themselves.

 

Slut was first attested in 1402, according to the OED. Its definition was originally "A woman of dirty, slovenly or untidy habits or appearance; a foul slattern". A rarer meaning is 'kitchen maid' and, indeed, Pepys referred to his servant as 'an admirable slut'. The OED has several citations where 'slut' is used affectionately.

 

By the 16th century the idea of promiscuity and loose morals had attached itself to the word. According to Lisa Sutherland of Collins Dictionary, who is quoted in the BBC piece, there was an upsurge in the use of the word 'slut' in the 1920s, and again in the 1980s.

 

The origin of the word is uncertain, although it seems that other Germanic languages have similar words.

 

Between 4 and 5% of words that begin with S have an L as their second letter, but there is a disproportionate number of adjectives among this group. A number of these are negative: slimy, slovenly, slatternly, sleazy, sly, slobbish, slothful, sluggish (although some are positive eg slim, slender, slight).

 

I am going to Dublin tomorrow for a short break. I haven't got any blog posts in reserve, so my next post will be on Sunday evening.

Slang in "Attack the Block"

Attack the Block is a new sci-fi adventure film which is set on a South London housing estate. The language of the teens who battle the aliens in the film has foxed many audiences already.Here are some examples:

allow it: don't do it

bare: lots of

fam: mates

peak: it's getting too much or overwhelming

 

See an interview with a couple of the actors on this ITN page.

New words allowed in Scrabble

If you've ever played Scrabble with friends or family, no doubt you've had lots of arguments over whether something really is a word or not. The ultimate arbiter is a special Collins dictionary, and a new edition has just been launched, which contains 3,000 new words. Some of these new additions are slang, such as innit, tik and gak, and others come from other varieties of English, such as the Indian cookery terms keema, alu (or aloo) and gobi.

 

Grrl (or should that be grrrl?) is now allowed. This comes from the Riot grrrl punk movement of the 1990s. Thang is also allowed - that's a slang pronunciation of 'thing'. Vlog (videolog) is also included in the latest Collins Scrabble list and - useful if you've got a Q but no U - so is qin, which is a Chinese musical instrument, I think.

 

Collins have not yet updated their online Scrabble words checker - that still rejects all the above new words.

 

The Today programme on Radio 4 had an interview with a Collins representative this morning (listen again for another week here). See also this Telegraph article.

The language of marriage

The OED currently has a link on its home page to the Historical Thesaurus entry for 'marriage' in honour of the recent royal wedding.

 

 The earliest word for marriage was 'bridelock', which did not survive beyond the 13th century, the fate of most Old English words with the suffix -lock, as I mentioned in this post on wedlock. Various words based on the word spouse also once meant marriage: spouse itself, spousal, spousage, spousehead, spousehood, espousal and espousage.

 

The word 'marriage' has existed since the 13th century. The word 'wedding', once a synonym of marriage, has been around even longer; the first citation in the OED dates back to around the year 1000.

 

Other synonyms of 'marriage' in the Historical Thesaurus include wedhood, weddedhood, bed-match, Hymen's band and shackledom. An interesting entry is 'jactitation of marriage'; jactitation means 'boasting' and jactitation of marriage was a legal term. Here, the legal sense of jactitation was a false declaration which was detrimental to someone ie someone insists they are married to a particular person, when they are not, thus causing distress or embarrassment to that person. The citations in the OED make it clear that it was not a very common offence.