The virtual linguist

Tiger kidnapping

The term tiger kidnapping featured in a news story I heard yesterday - a gang forced its way into the house of a security van driver in Belfast, kidnapped the man's wife and teenage son, and forced the man to go to work, seemingly as normal, and then hand over money from the van to them. The wife and son were later released (story here).

 

I'd never heard the term tiger kidnapping before; Wikipedia says it was coined in the 80s, although crimes that could be described as tiger kidnappings had occurred in the 70s. I see from a Google News search that the terms tiger raid, tiger robbery and tiger gang are also used. The phrases include the word 'tiger' because of the predatory stalking that goes on before the actual crime is committed; it is not a crime committed on the spur of the moment -- the criminals need to stalk their target, and find out a lot of information about his or her lifestyle and movements.

Torches of freedom

Anyone who doubts the power of words, and denies that the choice of one word, or group of words, over another is important, might like to consider the 'torches of freedom' campaign in the United States in the late 1920s.

 

Edward Bernays, often considered the father of public relations, represented the American Tobacco Company, who were keen to promote smoking amongst women and thus boost sales. It was frowned upon at the time for women to smoke in public - they risked being considered immoral or, at the very least, ridiculous. Bernays consulted a leading psychoanalyst, AA Brill, who told him that women subconsciously regarded cigarettes as phallic symbols and as a symbol of male power. Bernays thus decided to portray smoking to women as a sign of freedom and power, and to persuade women that to smoke was to smash a restrictive taboo. He therefore dubbed cigarettes 'torches of freedom'. He got a group of debutantes to march in the 1929 Easter Sunday Parade in New York and, at a signal from him, they all lit up. Needless to say, Bernays had arranged for a photographer to be on hand, and pictures of the attractive and well-dressed women appeared in all the newspapers. The campaign worked; in 1923 women accounted for about 5% of all cigarettes sold, and by 1929 this figure had gone up to 12%.

 

I learnt all this from the first part of a fascinating old (2002) BBC documentary called The Century of the Self, which I watched on YouTube. The series was about various members of the family of Sigmund Freud -- Edward Bernays was Freud's nephew.

 

Bernays is often (including in the aforementioned documentary) said to be the person who popularised the term 'public relations'. He didn't invent the term. The expression public relations dates back to the mid-17th century according to the OED, but originally it just meant the relations you had with other people. The term in its modern sense was first used at the very end of the 19th century, when Bernays was just a boy. In the documentary Bernays said he had decided against using the word 'propaganda' as that reminded people of the Germans during WWI, so it had negative connotations. He seized on the existing term 'public relations' as a substitute.

 

The programme on Bernays can be viewed on YouTube here.

New words in the Concise Oxford Dictionary

About 400 new words have gone into the latest edition (the twelfth -- the first appeared exactly 100 years ago in 1911) of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. This is a single-volume dictionary, with just under 2000 pages; it is not the massive Oxford English Dictionary (20 volumes in hard copy, probably around 23 volumes-worth online), despite what appears in most of the newspaper reports about this story. The Concise Oxford Dictionary concentrates on contemporary English, whilst the OED is a historical dictionary. Once a word goes in the latter, it never comes out.

 

Many of the new words are technology- or social media-related:

retweet: forward, or repost, a tweet (on Twitter) (see the bottom of this post)

sexting: the sending of sexually explicit photos via mobile phone

cyberbullying: online bullying

woot (or w00t): expression of elation or triumph (equivalent of hurrah)

textspeak: language characteristic of text messaging

 

Other entries include: alternative vote (already a bit passé, since the electorate voted against this system in the UK in a referendum earlier this year), mankini, jeggings, domestic goddess, surveil (keep under surveillance) and upcycle (recycle old goods to make things of higher value).

 

Here's the blurb about the COD from the OUP website. Here's a BBC report on the new dictionary.

 

You don't need to buy the new COD. All the words are defined in Oxford Dictionaries Online's free searchable dictionary.

The last chance saloon

Britain is in the last chance saloon when it comes to tackling the social problems that led to the riots last week, according to Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith (eg, see here). This means that we - or the government - have to do something now.

 

The expression last chance saloon comes from the American West of the late 19th century. The original meaning was literal - a saloon that was on the border of a town advertised itself as offering the 'last chance' to buy alcohol before travellers left for a 'dry' area or area with few facilities. The figurative meaning is chiefly British and means "a situation offering one final opportunity or hope for success" (OED). It can also mean "a place seen as the last refuge of the unsuccessful or desperate" (OED) or "a place frequented by unsavoury or contemptible people" (Collins).

 

I took part in a pub quiz with a group of friends recently and our team name was 'The Last Chance Saloon" -- whether that was because we were unsavoury and contemptible, or because we rarely win anything and were going to go all out and do our best, I cannot say!

Nightcap

Contrary to popular belief, nightcaps do not help you get a good night's sleep, according to reports in today's papers (eg here). Why is an alcoholic drink taken at bedtime known as a nightcap? A nightcap was just a cap worn in bed from about the 14th century, but by the early 19th century it had become a euphemism for an alcoholic tipple. That might be a pint of table beer, according to an OED citation, or a pint of hot brandy and water (this latter citation has been omitted from the latest version of the Dictionary, but was in the 2nd - 1989 - edition).

 

Innocent-sounding euphemisms have often been used where alcohol is concerned. A glass of something strong taken first thing in the morning became known as an 'eye-opener' in the early 19th century, too.

Anne Hathaway's Yorkshire accent

Anne Hathaway's accent in her new film One Day has been slated by film critics, although her acting was praised. She plays Emma, who is from Yorkshire, but in the trailer (can be watched here) she says only a few words at a time, so it's hard to hear her. It didn't sound very Yorkshire-like to me, I must say.

 

The Village Voice describes her accent as 'dodgy' and 'hodgepodge', Total Film says her accent goes from 'broad Yorkshire to RP within scenes' and What Culture says her accent is 'all over the place'. More reviews here.

Do in and bloody

I saw Pygmalion at the theatre last night. One of Eliza's expressions that shocks the middle-class members of society is 'do in' as in the line "My aunt died of influenza: so they said.‥ But it's my belief they done the old woman in." Professor Higgins covers up for the gaffe by saying it is the latest small talk.

 

Pygmalion was written in 1912, so 'do in' was a fairly new slang expression at that time. The first citation in the OED for 'do in' in the sense 'murder' (but also 'bring ruin upon') is from 1905. Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Historical Slang says it is a late 19th-century expression. Done in meaning 'exhausted' comes a few years later.

 

Bloody (as in Eliza's line "Walk? Not bloody likely!") was a word that would have caused a lot more controversy both in society and on the stage. The actress Mrs Patrick Campbell, who first played the role on stage, probably risked her career by uttering it. It created such a stir that the OED tells us that the word 'pygmalion' became a jocular euphemism for 'bloody' soon after the play was first performed (the first OED citation is "They are really useless - quite pygmalion useless").

Favour vs favours

Boris Johnson, mayor of London, was described in an article in The Independent a few days ago as a man on whom Mrs Thatcher's favours fell. The full description was:

"Johnson, by contrast, has been disarmingly nonchalant about his peculiar, anachronistic personality ever since he emerged into the fierce sunlight of Thatcher's approval as her favourite right-wing journalist. Like all the men on whom her favours fell, he had not only intellect but charisma."

 

A couple of days later there was a correction in the newspaper's Errors & Omissions section. As editor Guy Keleny wrote, Mrs Thatcher bestowed her favour on people, not favours.

 

What a difference an 's' makes. Favours in the plural has a particular meaning, albeit slightly old-fashioned these days. As the Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE) explains, the word favours in the plural is "used with reference to a woman allowing a man to have sexual intercourse with her". This is also in the OED, but it doesn't give a definition as such, merely uses the word 'euphemistically' to introduce a number of citations eg one from Thomas Medwin (author of Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron) in 1824: "One who had bestowed her favours on many".

The language of unrest

The BBC received many complaints when it called rioting troublemakers 'protesters' when trouble started last weekend (as this article reports). A day or so later the Corporation started using the term 'rioters'. Many members of the public weren't happy with that word either, preferring thugs, criminals, hooligans, opportunists and even terrorists. The tabloids have not been as restrained as the BBC, with the words morons, cretins, mindless yobs and anarchists bandied about.

 

The unrest this week has brought other language trends to the attention of the public. Feds (US, hitherto not British, slang) has been used as a slang word for the police, bally meaning balaclava has been a frequent word in Tweets, as has bare, meaning 'a lot of' and mandem (or man dem) meaning 'friends'.

 

More in this Guardian article. Incidentally, the Guardian uses the term 'UK riots'. The BBC talks of 'English riots' or 'riots in England'.

Wanton

The word 'wanton' crops up in several news reports today: wanton damage, wanton violence, wanton criminality, wanton destruction, and so on.

 

Wanton is an interesting word, because it is more or less the only word used in modern English with the Old English negative prefix wan-, the approximate equivalent of the common modern prefix un-. The '-ton' part of the word is from the past participle of the now obsolete Old English word téon, to train or discipline, so wanton is literally 'undisciplined'. The word 'wanton' was not around in the Old English period, however, appearing only in the Middle English period.

 

Wan- words around in the Old English period included wansceaft, misfortune, and wanspéd, ill-success. The prefix was most prolific in the north of England and Scotland, and there were, until the 19th century, many more wan- words used in these areas, eg wanchancy (unlucky), wancouth (uncouth), wandought (feeble) and wanweird (misfortune).