The virtual linguist

Caesar's wife

"You have to be like Caesar's wife", said Today presenter John Humphrys this morning to Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, the 'you' being the police in general (listen again here for another week). What is meant by 'like Caesar's wife' is 'above suspicion'.

 

The wife in question is Pompeia, Julius Caesar's second wife (his first wife Cornelia died in childbirth in 69 or 68 BC). The Roman writer Plutarch wrote in his Life of Caesar how Pompeia once hosted an all-women event, the Bona Dea festival, at her and Caesar's home. A man dressed as a woman surreptitiously gained entry. It is assumed that he was having an affair with Pompeia. He was caught and sent for trial for committing sacrilege by trespassing on a Vestal Virgin celebration, but was acquitted. Caesar did not come out and accuse his wife of adultery, but divorced her, nevertheless, on the grounds that his wife ought to be above suspicion.

Fry's English Delight on brevity

Fry's English Delight on Radio 4 this week (listen for another week here) was devoted to brevity, even terseness. Stephen Fry is a well-known fan of Twitter, and he began by discussing the suitability of English to Twitter. The average English word, he said, has five letters (this is probably true if you are talking about the base form of words; I have access to a very large database of words used in crosswords, and there are twice as many 7- and 8-letter words as 5-letter words, although that is because suffixes such as -ing and -ed are included). This means that even speakers of other languages use English words in their tweets because they're shorter -- compare 'now' and maintenant, for instance.

 

Guests on the programme included British haiku poet Caroline Gourlay, the master of one-liners Tim Vine and former editor of The Sun Kelvin McKenzie. Newspaper headlines need short headlines, and, among journalists themselves, it seems that the shorter and pithier the headline, the more successful. Certainly some of the most memorable Sun headlines have been very short, including the much-criticised "Gotcha!" after the 1980s sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands War, and the headline accompanying a picture of the Prince and Princess of Wales in front of the Taj Mahal before their divorce, namely "The Glums" (a reference to a 1950s radio comedy show family). Apart from the jokes, headlines often use short words that are rarely heard in ordinary conversation eg "MPs in bid to axe ...".

 

Fry and his guests conceded that it is far more difficult to write a shorter headline, or a shorter article or text, than a long, rambling one. As Mark Twain famously wrote (in a reply to this telegram request from his publisher "NEED 2-PAGE SHORT STORY TWO DAYS"), "NO CAN DO 2 PAGES TWO DAYS. CAN DO 30 PAGES 2 DAYS. NEED 30 DAYS TO DO 2 PAGES".

 

Pop songs often use abbreviations, too, as there are often only three minutes in which to get across the sentiments. Laura Barton of The Guardian spoke on this subject in the Fry programme earlier. Thus we find in pop songs words -- often made up -- that encapsulate a whole idea in a few letters. 'Wop-bop-a-loop-a', for example, from Little Richard's Tutti Frutti captured the essence of the new rock'n'roll era, and seemed to say to listeners 'stop what you're doing and dance!'.

 

If 'words' like 'wop-bop-a-loop-a' summed up the 1950s, what words sum up the 'noughties'. Broadcaster and technology commentator Alex Krotoski felt 'meme', coined by Richard Dawkins, encapsulated the Zeitgeist.

 

Listen to Fry's English Delight on BBC iPlayer here.

New additions to the OED June 2011

The OED added another batch of new words, and new senses of old words, recently. There are around 1800 in total. They include:

Babe: this was already in to refer to infants and young women, but now there is the sense 'a sexually attractive man' and the sense 'a familiar or affectionate form of address to a person of either sex'. Despite the fact that the latter sense has only just entered the Dictionary, the first citation is from 1918.

Brain candy: "broadly appealing , undemanding entertainment, which is not intellectually stimulating". It is under the main Brain entry. Again, this is older than you might think -- the first citation dates back to 1895.

Cryonaut: "A person who is cryogenically preserved with a view to being revived in the distant future"

Environmentally unfriendly: This joins environmentally friendly, environmentally sound and environmentally sensitive at the Environmentally entry.

Gender reassignment: "The process of a person adopting the physical characteristics of the opposite sex by means of medical procedures such as surgery or hormone treatment". At the Gender entry.

Green fuel: "(a type of) fuel, esp. biofuel, which is regarded as less harmful to the environment than conventional fuels". At the Green entry.

Urb: an urban area, a city.This is described as colloquial, and is a headword in its own right.

Use it or lose it: this isn't defined, except that we are told it is used in the imperative as an admonition. Surprisingly, it dates back to 1887, when it appeared in the US newspaper The Independent.

 

You can read more about the latest batch of additions and revisions on the OED website here.

Vulpine or lupine?

The presenters of this morning's Today programme on BBC Radio 4 apologised for a mistake they had made earlier -- referring to someone known as Wolfman as 'vulpine'. They confirmed that they should have said 'lupine' which is the adjective referring to wolves; 'vulpine' refers to foxes.

 

The words for animals, and the adjectives that relate to them, are often completely unrelated in English. That's because the animal name has been around since Old English, but the adjective has a French root. I give more examples in this old post.

Glamour and It girls

I caught a very interesting programme on BBC iPlayer earlier about Hollywood films of the 1930s and, particularly, their influence on drab, dreary Britain of that era. It was part of a series called Glamour's Golden Age (if you are based in the UK, you can see it for another few days here).

 

One of the earliest Hollywood superstars was Clara Bow, the original 'It girl'. She got that nickname after appearing in the 1927 silent movie It. Despite the 1920s origin of the phrase, the term 'it girl' only entered the single-volume Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE) recently; it wasn't in the first edition of this dictionary of 1998.

 

As for the word 'glamour', I learnt from the programme that this word, although it had existed previously, became much-used and popular in the 1930s with the new sense of 'attractiveness or physical allure', since Hollywood brought glamour to ordinary people's lives for the first time. Its original (18th century) meaning was "magic, enchantment or spell" (OED definition).

 

The programme is available here for a few more days.

Poor spelling costs online businesses 'millions'

This BBC website piece on how spelling mistakes result in online businesses losing money has clearly touched a nerve with many people -- there were over 600 readers' comments when I last looked.

 

According to online entrepreneur Charles Duncombe, even one or two spelling mistakes on a website can result in a drastic drop in sales. He says that consumers can mistrust a site if it can't get its spelling right. Even Professor William Dutton of Oxford University says that misspellings can raise questions regarding trust and credibility.

 

Personally, I feel that the people most likely to lose money due to spelling mistakes are those selling stuff on eBay. Try looking for a fuchsia-coloured handbag or other item on eBay, spelling fuchsia correctly, and you'll be missing out on most of the offerings!

 

The BBC article is here.

Americanisms in British English

In the 19th century the words reliable and talented were singled out as being objectionable, because it was believed they were Americanisms. People are still railing against Americanisms in British English, as the author of this BBC piece describes. Well, some people rail against them, whilst others use them obliviously, not really understanding what they are saying. So, for instance, people in Britain will talk quite happily about stepping up to the plate, without having a clue about, or interest in, baseball.

 

The writer of the article notes how so many people use the American word now, even if a perfectly good British one exists: we go to watch a movie, not a film; we drive trucks, not lorries; we use the elevator, not the lift; and we live in apartments, not flats.

 

For more Americanisms that irritate some people over here, see the BBC article.

Fry's English Delight

I heard the first programme in a new series of Fry's English Delight, with Stephen Fry, on Radio 4 yesterday (listen again for another week here). The subject was the mouth - the mechanics of speaking, eating and smiling, among other things.

 

Regarding smiling, a psychologist said how English and American smiles differed. Although the phrase 'stiff upper lip' is associated with the English, in fact the archetypal English smile is one where the upper lip is pulled back and down - Prince Charles being a notable exponent of the type. In the American smile, on the other hand, the upper teeth are on full show -- Tom Cruise is a typical American 'smiler' in this respect, according to Stephen Fry's guest. Americans, therefore, often interpret an English smile as a grimace.

 

A ventriloquist said that she found pronouncing words like mummy and bottle (the lips need to be closed to utter the sounds b and m) nowhere near as difficult as maintaining an impassive facial expression when speaking.

 

A lip-reader said that we all lip-read to a certain extent, but relying on lip-reading is not as safe as some people assume. A group of lip-readers watching the same speakers may well disagree on what is being said. In order to lip-read properly one needs to be near the person talking, and that person needs to be facing the lip-reader. The lip-reader also needs to know the context. The McGurk Effect experiment shows how what we hear is affected by what we can see. Try it here or google McGurk Effect for other videos.

 

The Fry's English Delight programme is available here.

News of the World in the OED

The News of the World - or News of the Screws, as it is nicknamed, because of its extensive coverage of sex scandals - is closing today. There are over a hundred citations from the newspaper in the OED. Here are a few of them:

Big E: (2001) Meanwhile dizzy hairdresser Helen, 23, is still unaware that Big G‥has already given her the Big E after being humiliated by her flirty on-screen antics with car designer Paul.
Bookable: (1997) Swansea's agony was completed nine minutes from time when Kwame Ampadu was sent off for two bookable fouls.
Dogger: (2007) One dogger claims to have had sex ‘up against the Farmleigh railings’.
Dognapper: (1997) A ‘Dognapper’ has sent a chilling message to the owner of a star pooch.
Glass: (2006) A clubber glassed him‥. He needed seven stitches after the maniac smashed a bottle into his face.
Handbags: (1997) It was handbags in the dressing room but we were able to sort things out.
Kop: (1973) For a time it seemed as if the Kop would never stop singing.
Missus: (1990) Telly comic Les Dennis has ditched his missus for‥stunner Sophie.
Peel: (1990) A brunette‥wearing a policewoman's uniform‥peeled this off, followed by black panties.
Roasting: (2003) [He] insists that roasting is mainly the preserve of the new, young stars—flash, rich and directionless.
Romp: (1999) Now Angela‥vigorously backs moves to jail tutors who romp with pupils—even if they are over the age of consent.
Saucy: (1977) He [sc. Mozart] won a reputation as a bed-hopping gambler and earned a fortune.‥ Experts unearthed the saucy truth when they studied the great man's personal accounts.
Sizzler: (1977) A blue movie being shown to a judge in court was a real sizzler. In fact, it was so hot that it began to melt..
Toy-boy: (1987) At 48 she is like a teenage girl again—raving it up with four different lovers including a toyboy of 27!

 

Here are a few from earlier in the 20th century:

Comb-out: (1928) Chief-insp. Berrett, of Scotland Yard,‥supervised a comb-out of all the motor-bandits.
Glamorise: (1938) Is this the way to glamorise ‘a godsend’‥? Shouldn't your advisers be aware that‥his employers are‥mightily concerned in finding him tough, he-man roles?
Lover's Lane: (1947) Her‥body‥was found in a ‘lovers' lane’ on an empty building site.

 

and a few from even earlier - the 19th century - quite a change in style:

Brief: (1868) A Brief‥has but the Pope's name at the beginning—‘Pius Papa IX.’—is signed by the Cardinal Secretary of Briefs, bears date from the Nativity, and is written in modern letters upon soft white parchment.
Chirograph: (1868) A third form of Papal expression in writing, called a Chirograph‥It appears indeed to have no binding force except what it may derive from personal respect for its author, and resembles in authority somewhat the minutes which at times are drawn up in our offices, or the peculiar expression of Royal wishes formerly in use in Prussia, and termed Cabinets-ordre.
Man-fiend: (1888) The man fiend cautiously arose, not without marks of the deed about him, and wended his way to Aldgate.

Donkey

My last post was about donkey's years, or ears, but the word donkey itself has an interesting history, too. It is a relatively recent word - it dates back to the late 18th century - and was originally a slang word for an ass. The OED says that it is likely that it comes from the man's name Duncan (cf Neddy, also defined as a donkey or ass in the Dictionary, and, of course, from the man's name Edward).

 

Donkey was originally pronounced to rhyme with monkey, which is why the words are spelled similarly.