The virtual linguist

Gimcrack

I've heard or seen the word 'gimcrack' a few times lately (it's in this article - "the gimcrack glamour of the London Olympics", and I think I heard writer Will Self use it on the radio), so perhaps it's getting a new lease of life.

 

It was originally, in Middle English, spelled with a b instead of an m, and the OED thinks that it may have a link to the Old French giber to shake. The m may have crept in because of an association with the obsolete word gim, meaning smart or spruce. Nowadays a gimcrack is a knick-knack or a useless ornament, something showy but unsubstantial; the OED thinks that the original meaning may have been 'slight or flimsy ornament'. In the 17th century it began to be used to refer to people, and meant a fop (who would certainly have been 'gim'). In the 18th century it was then applied to women, when it became more insulting and contemptuous.

 

BBC quiz on less-spoken languages

Try your hand at this quiz on the BBC website to test your knowledge of some of the world's smaller and rarer languages. I had to guess most of them, although, since only one of the answers to the question "Which Cornish phrase means 'how do I get to the shops?'" had a question mark at the end of it, it was pretty easy to get that one right.

 

Winter's Tale

I went to see Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale yesterday as part of the Globe's international season (it was performed in Yoruba, a West African language - and it was a great performance). I've always wondered why that play is called The Winter's Tale, since winter doesn't seem to have a lot to do with it, but it seems that Shakespeare's audiences of the early 1600s would have understood the 'winter' of a winter's tale (or winter tale - both forms are in the OED) to refer to 'an idle tale' (OED definition) in the sense a light-hearted folk tale, and not necessarily true. In this interesting and erudite article, Germaine Greer says "an old wives' tale is the same thing as a winter's tale". In the 1590s the playwright George Peele wrote a popular play called The Old Wives' Tale and in it one of the characters says "a merry winter's tale would drive away the time trimly".

Changes in English over the Queen's reign

Does the Queen speak the Queen's English? Not to the extent that she did at the beginning of her reign, is the answer. The Queen's accent has changed over the decades - she no longer says the traditional 1950s 'posh' pronunciation 'orf' (off), 'bleck het' (black hat) and 'syuper' (super), and her vowels have been influenced by Estuary English. So says lexicographer Susie Dent in a Daily Telegraph article.

 

These days a regional accent is equated with honesty and reliability, which explains why politicians affect them. Another big change -- in grammar this time -- is the trend towards using the active voice rather than the passive in official documents (tax forms now say 'I have sent you two forms', rather than 'you have been sent two forms' or 'two forms have been sent to you').

 

Things that were once considered incorrect, such as saying 'disinterested' when you mean 'uninterested', are now very common.

 

Minority communities are adding new words to English eg bait (absurd), bare (lots of) and safe (a greeting) from Caribbean English. Hinglish is responsible for adding Hindi- and Urdu-derived words to the language.

 

Here's the full article.

Phrases coined by Juvenal

Not that much is known about the Roman poet Juvenal, who lived in the late-1st/ early-2nd century AD, but he coined a number of phrases which are still common today, and some of which are still said often in Latin. These expressions come from his Satires, five books of poems.

bread and circuses: Juvenal used the term contemptuously to refer to the concerns of his fellow Romans, who had no interest in heroism or any higher qualities, but only in trivialities and diversions (as provided by the government as a way of appeasing the masses).

a sound mind in a sound body, often said in Latin, mens sana in corpore sano: It is one of a list of things that the poet considers people should desire in life.

rare bird, often said in Latin, rara avis: the translation of Juvenal's line is "a bird rare upon the earth and very like a black swan". 'Black swan' is in the OED, as is rara avis, and, in fact, is defined as a 'rara avis'.

who will watch the watch-men? (or who will guard the guardians?): this phrase is often used these days with reference to corrupt governments, but in Juvenal's Satires the context was marital infidelity, namely that employing guards to keep an eye on or even lock up an immoral wife was pointless (as she would seduce those too, presumably).

Less common is another Latin phrase attributed to Juvenal, which has its own entry in the OED - res angusta domi, or 'narrowed circumstances at home', as in Juvenal's line "It is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by narrowed circumstances at home". James Boswell used the phrase about Samuel Johnson in his biography: "The res angusta domi prevented him from having the advantage of a complete academical education".

 

Juvenal is also mentioned in the OED as having used the word 'acersecomic', which means 'a person whose hair has never been cut'.

Government advocates re-moding

The Transport Secretary has advised London residents to 're-route, re-mode and retime' during the Olympics (see the Secretary 're-moding' in the short video on this BBC page). According to the Department of Transport 'remode' means 'to change the mode of transport that you use'. In particular they want people to avoid the Tube and buses during the Olympics, when London is expected to be packed with visitors.

 

Moding is in the OED with two citations from the 17th century; it meant 'fashionable' at the time, from the verb to mode. There is no entry for re-mode. Anyway, the sense of 'mode' as used by the government is based on the noun 'mode', which means 'method'.

 

There are plenty more examples of baffling government jargon on this BBC page.

University in Milan to teach in English

The Politecnico di Milano, a leading university in Milan, is switching to teaching completely in English from 2014, according to this BBC piece. It is doing so to avoid being isolated and to keep up with other universities across the world (many in other countries already offer teaching in English) and to attract students from China, India and elsewhere. English is also seen as vital in raising a university in international rankings.

 

See the full story here.

Tea

I came across a fascinating website earlier, Tsiosophy, devoted to the history of tea and other tea-related things. The modern word in English, tea, has gone through many variants in its history. Seemingly, the word for tea in most 16th-century Chinese dialects was cha, and the OED does have early citations with this spelling, but the dialect of the locals who Dutch traders would have dealt with when importing tea to Europe pronounced the Chinese character for tea as te, and this was the form adopted into English (so says OED).

The words cha, chah, char, chai and tsia are all in the OED as either early forms of ‘tea’, or slang words (cha or char is still very common in Britain now). Those are the headwords – there are many more variant spellings listed that are not headwords eg tcha, chau, chaw, tay, tey, thea and others.

Tsiology is also listed as a nonce-word (ie used once for a specific book or reason). In this instance Tsiology was the title of an 1827 scholarly dissertation .

There is far more about tea and the different words for tea – and it’s far more erudite than this post – on this Tsiosophy page (a word meaning ‘the wisdom of tea’, according to the author).

Cynic

The words cynic, cynical and cynicism are all related to the Greek word for ‘dog’. Indeed, a number of the words beginning cyn- in the dictionary are to do with dogs, eg cynophobia, aversion to and fear of dogs, cynoclept, dog-stealer, and cynanthropy, a species of madness in which a man imagines himself to be a dog (OED definitions).

The meaning of cynic in current usage is someone who does not believe in the sincerity or goodness of human motives, but Cynics were originally a school of philosophers in ancient Greece, whose aim was to live a life of virtue and who shunned fame, wealth and the comforts of life. The most famous among them was Diogenes, who begged for food and whatever he needed and lived in a barrel. He was often referred as Diogenes the Dog. He didn’t seem to mind this epithet and referred to himself as dog-like, in the sense that he had no shame, couldn’t care less what others thought of him, and was not concerned with his food or surroundings.

The reason why the school of philosophers was named after the dog may be because Antisthenes, a pupil of Socrates considered the founder of Cynic philosophy, taught in a gymnasium called Cynosarges, meaning white, or swift, dog. People related the name to dogs, and began calling the Cynic scholars dog-like.

Diogenes is credited with being one of the first users, if not the first, of the term cosmopolitan ie citizen of the world, which is how he described himself when asked where he was from. His name is also immortalised in the medical condition known as Diogenes’ syndrome (which I blogged on here), which is to do with excessive hoarding – something Diogenes most definitely did not do.

James' Medicinal Dictionary

The Medicinal Dictionary was published in three volumes between 1743 and 1745, and was written by the physician Robert James. He was an old schoolmate of Samuel Johnson (albeit six years older), and the two men became friends later in London. The dictionary is mostly of interest nowadays for the parts of it that Samuel Johnson wrote for his friend. James later helped Johnson with medical definitions in his own dictionary (which came out in 1755).

There are a number of citations in the OED from James’ Medicinal Dictionary. About half of them begin with A. There is no mention that Johnson wrote these, but apparently Johnson did help out more with the entries at the beginning of the alphabet. Here they are:
abaptiston: type of trepan
abort (noun): aborted foetus
acaleph: jellyfish-like creature
acedia: listlessness
acne: skin complaint
acnestis: this is one of those words that often come up in lists of amusing words, or lists of words that you didn’t know there was a word for. Ammon Shea drew attention to it when he read the OED from start to finish (see this previous post). The first citation is attributed to James, and it encapsulates exactly what the acnestis is: “Acnestis, that Part of the Spine of the Back, which reaches from .. the Part betwixt the Shoulder-blades, to the Loins. This Part seems to have been originally called so in Quadrupeds only, because they cannot reach it to scratch.”
acrasia: intemperance, excess
acroasis: oral discourse, lecture
action: influence, effect, agency. The citation is from James’ Cathartica dictionary entry: “This may possibly have been a particular Preparation of Hellebore corrected, in order to render its Action less violent”.
adarces: salty substance found on plants and used for therapeutic purposes
adynamia: physical weakness
anhidrosis: inability to sweat
ankyloglossia: medical condition of tongue-tie
aromatic: fragrant (the citation is “Aromatic reed”, which is also at the ‘reed’ entry)
conceptus: newly conceived embryo, foetus or fertilised egg
crystalline: relating to crystals
dog-cherry: plant
green: green vegetable (the citation is from the ‘spinach’ entry in James’ dictionary)
metathesis: the movement of diseased matter to a part of the body where it will be less injurious. (This definition is now obsolete. Metathesis these days is more common as a term in linguistics, and means the transposition  of sounds or letters in a word. I occasionally mention it in blog posts, eg here).
morum: tumour or swelling of the eyelid
reed: type of grass (see ‘aromatic’ above)
retorrid: (of humours) dried out or burnt up by excessive heat.
Roman nigella: plant
septenary: the citation refers to a septenary fever ie one that lasts seven days
stasis: stagnation
statice: plant genus
staxis: slight defluxion of any humour, eg nasal haemorrhage
strigment: the dirt and perspiration scraped from the skin with a strigil
strigmentitious: the adjective of above
strike (verb): to pierce, stab
styptic: (of a medicament) that arrests haemorrhage
uvea: membrane of the iris

Robert James is credited in the OED with the literal usage of the phrase ‘hair of the dog’ in his A Treatise on Canine Madness (1760). The application of a hair of the mad dog to the wound was meant to be the cure for the bite, according to James. The phrase has long been used (even before James used it in its literal sense) to mean ‘an alcoholic drink taken to cure a hangover’.