ent

Posted on July 22, 2013 | Leave a comment

Ah, now, what might this word repres-ent? Could it be an ant, an insect, an ent-omological ent-ity? Or is it an ENT, an ear, nose, and throat doctor? If I look in the Oxford English Dictionary I find two words, one obsolete and the other obsolesc-ent: the first refers to a scion, sprig, or graft, and the second to an existing unity (as opposed to a nonent, which does not exist) – an ent has entity and is an entity, and a nonent has no entity and is a nonentity.

But if you find a token of this word in a crossword puzzle, it will be a Tolkien word, naming a treelike being, about four metres tall and slow moving and very long lived. Much larger than an insect; like a tree with ears, nose, throat, feet, legs, arms (branches?). Long past being a scion, sprig, or graft, and – thanks to the loss of the female of their species and the endangerment of the forests – close to becoming a nonent. A short word for a long being with a long life. A root with ramifications.

And what of the above was Tolkien’s source for this word? None of the above. He took it from Old English: a couple of references to enta geweorc, ‘work of giants’ – enta being the genitive of ent. (Ignore the orc in geweorc; it just became the ork in modern work.) So an ent was a giant. As it is in Tolkien, a special kind.

And why would Tolkien imagine a tree-like being, leader of a doomed race, guardian of a threatened forest? Tolkien had a great fondness for forests – he grew up in a sylvan area just outside of Birmingham, with the trees towering over him, characters in themselves. But by the time he wrote his novels, the trees and pond of his childhood were long gone, built over. The destruction of forests in Lord of the Rings is a replaying of that. And the ents are the champions and repres-ent-atives that the forests of the English midlands should have had, ents to save them from their ends.

Tolkien liked to write songs for his characters. You may remember a few of them from the movies. Treebeard, the oldest ent and the leader of the ent-ire group, sings a song, “In the Willow-Meads of Tasarinen.” It’s been set to music a few times. Here’s Christopher Lee performing it on YouTube: an old, slow voice with orchestration, a voice suited to a tree being. But now here’s a much younger, lighter voice, singing her own tune for it: Adele McAllister. There is nothing about her voice that seems like it might be an ages-old leader of a dying race; it is rather the fresh spring of new growth. And that also has its place: the scions, the entities – give throat, ear, and nose to them.

Incidentally, Adele McAllister has recorded a whole bunch of Tolkien’s verse. Listen to it all at soundcloud.com. You will also find from her bio, as I just did, that she is a drama student at Tufts University. If that sounds familiar, it’s because I was one too, in the graduate program. At least some things regenerate.

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Mandheling

Posted on July 21, 2013 | Leave a comment

Does this word look like it needs – or has had – a little manhandling? Perhaps it was meant to be handling me or hand mingle but somehow lost its grip? Morphologically it’s modestly mystifying: there’s that ing that could be a verb ending, but it’s part of a ling that could be the old English suffix (as in earthling), but then there’s that ­dh – perhaps this is mand plus heling? But is that heling really healing or part of inhaling or what? And what mandates the mand? This seems like a curious mixture, perhaps an orphan word.

It may, however, seem familiar. It might give you a faint hint of almonds in the sound, but there’s another word that it’s often seen with that may make it more recognizable: Sumatra.

Sumatra, yes, that island of Indonesia. What do they grow there? Where do you see a label that says Sumatra Mandheling (or any of a few other spellings)? On coffee, usually in a coffee establishment.

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. There are a few things that are often tasted with notes and fancy little rhapsodic descriptors. Wine, of course, is one. Words are another. People do it now with beer, though that can get a little precious. But, ah, yes, also coffee. We like to talk about the flavour of our drugs.

And Mandheling is a rather nice drug as they go. It is full flavoured, rich, spicy. Aw, heck, let me quote some tasting notes from different places on their particular versions of Sumatra Mandheling:

A uniquely rich and aromatic cup – spicy and gently acidic, with a truly rare body. (Balzac’s Coffee)

A creamy body and loamy sweet flavors. It also has all the wild jungle flavors and earthiness you would expect in a Sumatra. (Gen X Coffee)

A traditional volcanic and earthy Indonesian profile is complemented by bittersweet chocolate and subtle cherry and raisin notes. A sassy and spicy finish adds to the balance of this full-bodied, yet mildly acidic coffee. (The Roasterie)

This coffee sounds like my kind of coffee (it is). Heck, it sounds like my kind of person. Sassy, spicy, earthy, mildly acidic, a creamy and truly rare body, and perhaps bittersweet? What’s not to like, I say! To have such a taste as you are inhaling its healing aromas…

So, now, where does it get its name? It’s an alternate spelling of Mandailing, which is the name of a people in northern Sumatra. They don’t actually grow this coffee; there was just some confusion by an early European buyer of the coffee, it seems. Thus the word and its sense have both undergone some manhandling. But where does the word Mandailing come from? It is thought to come from mande ‘mother’ and hilang ‘lost’ – ‘lost mother’, in other words. Just as the word has become separated from its mother and joined another family. At least it’s in good company.

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Glagolitic

Posted on July 21, 2013 | Leave a comment

I first encountered this word in a context where it named a thing from the dark mists of many centuries past in Eastern Europe, a mode of inscription of incantations to be seen by candlelight in dim ancient churches in forgotten valleys. Well, there it is: sometimes you learn about things first in horror movies.

And of course there are certain stereotypical images of medieval Slavonic churches. Even in the daylight, old Croatia, old Bulgaria, and thereabouts appear to the western mind as a place of tall rustic hats and rough clothes, stooped peasants and mildewy superstitions. Actually we can assume that the people then and there did find ways to enjoy their lives like people in most places and times. And the Glagolitic alphabet was for them not simply some collection of elaborately twisted sigils unlocking mystical verses for the illuminated.

Heck, an important thing about Glagolitic is that in Dalmatia (part of Croatia) it represented a very modern touch: the churches there, as of AD 1248, had permission to use their own language in the church service, and that language was written in the alphabet given it by Saints Cyril and Methodius. It is true that most people in that time and place would not have been able to read, but the scriptures and rites it recorded were hardly dark and foreign, let alone incomprehensible, for the people there and then. (Old Church Slavonic over time did become old and mystical and strange, just because the vernacular had changed; rituals always start as something fresh but, like the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, are valued by many precisely because of accumulated centuries of obscurity – a prophet is without honour in his home town, and a ritual is weaker if you can understand it clearly.)

The Glagolitic alphabet spread over much of Eastern Europe. But it was replaced in the common speech with the Cyrillic alphabet and, in some countries (such as Croatia), the Latin alphabet. So now it really does seem to our eyes like something hiding under the stairs in the dim basement of time. Have a look at it: www.omniglot.com/writing/glagolitic.htm .

It’s not helped, to Anglophone ears at least, by the sound of the name. To my ears, it certainly sounds dark and gigantic – or should I say gargantuan. We may think of the gulags – actually GULag prisons, if we wish to be etymological about it – or about glug, goggle, gaggle, blag, agglutinate, Golgi apparatus, ugly, stalagmite, Gollum… You can get pretty far into it. Because it’s a proper noun, the two g’s don’t look the same, and it dips down to a low g between the uprights of the l’s, then spatters off at the end with the dots of the i’s and the lower ascender of the t. The back-tongue voiced stops /g/ and the liquids /l/ give way to a crisper, almost glittering pair of voiceless stops /t/ /k/. The whole word goes three times between tongue back and tip.

But it’s foreign to us. It speaks to Slavic ears. Even the most foreign tongue is native to its speakers, and what seems dark is as clear as day. In Old Church Slavonic – once the vernacular of its land – the verb glagoliti means ‘speak’. You will hear and understand if you know how to listen.

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pillion

Posted on July 18, 2013 | Leave a comment

Does this word seem like it should be about pills or pillars? Look at those pillars in the middle, illi – is that what they are, perhaps holding up a pavilion? Is this word really billion with a b that has fallen and lost its voice? Or is there a pillow involved?

Pillow? How about a cushion? How about if the illi is two people, one in front of the other? Maybe with bags or equipment… hmm… Is that a bit of a reach? If you have a saddle or motorbike seat with a cushion behind it on which a second person can ride?

Because that’s what a pillion is: it’s a cushion on which a person can ride behind the driver of a motorcycle or the person with the reins on a horse. You just pile on and try not to look like a pillock. And that makes the circles in the p and o the front and back tires of the motorbike, perhaps – as Jim Taylor noted when he suggested this word.

Pillion can also refer to the passenger, and the pillion on the pillion can be said to be riding pillion. So where does this pile of pillions come from? Probably Irish Gaelic pillín or Scots Gaelic pillean, which come from pellis, Latin for ‘skin’ or ‘hide’ or ‘leather’. Which, incidentally, is probably also what both driver and pillion are wearing.

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Maybe don’t make these sounds too much

Posted on July 17, 2013 | Leave a comment

I have heard from various people that certain speech and quasi-speech sounds can be quite irritating. Now, some of them are normal enough when used just a little here and there – it’s just their overuse or overly obtrusive use that’s the issue. Some are simple matters of taste and don’t bother some people at all. Some are probably best left undone altogether. But, just to make the point in an in-your-face and just slightly tongue-in-cheek way, I’ve titled my latest article for TheWeek.com…

10 annoying sounds you need to stop making

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shindig

Posted on July 16, 2013 | 4 comments

I do love a good shindig, don’t you? Maybe some dishes to dig into, glasses of shandy and Guinness, dancing to music you can dig with people you’ll take a shine to… Shell out a few shinplasters and frug the night away! Dig your shins into it! Whatever that means.

I guess dancing is like digging shins… somehow… Actually, shindig could as easily be a paleontological excavation (along with skulldig and ribdig and so on). But it’s not. And it could be a kick in the shins in repayment for some subtle dig. But it’s… well, actually, that’s the first recorded sense for shindig. But no one’s used it that way for 150 years, as far as I know, so we can ignore that in favour of the ‘party’ sense – and the other sense of a donnybrook, a knockabout, a brawl.

Duane Aubin suggested this word, and noted,

This is one of those words that just feels good in the mouth, to me anyway. It’s got an “upness” to it with its ascenders and dots lifting the i’s and lifting the eyes; “dig” offers that anchoring descender that provides a surprisingly and balancing crisp resolution to the exclusively voiced consonants…

Yup, I do like it too. It starts with the teeth close together and the tongue up front for the slushy splash of “sh,” then it presses onto the tongue tip softly and then hardening in “nd,” and finally slides to the back and digs in at “g.” The vowels are both mid-high front, requiring little movement of the tongue and none of the lips. The whole thing is like a rake’s progress at a pool party: splash and swim, relax into cushy chairs, fall asleep (or anyway become recumbent) at the back. It has arms up in the air h d, hands holding up lit lighters (or phones) as at a concert i i, and finally that g that is like the s getting loose and low.

So where does it come from? Not, it seems, simply from shin plus dig. Oh, those two words are undoubtedly the reason it took this final form from its previous, but this was likely a matter of plastic surgery, not creation ex nihilo. Before it was shindig, this word was (the evidence suggests) shindy. What was that? The noun that was, before that, shinty. Oh, so what was that? The noun that was, before that, shinny.

Which, according to the OED, is basically field hockey, although in Canada it’s informal generally rule-free hockey played on ponds or streets or occasionally on cheap rec ice. Oh, and where does the word shinny come from? It seems to be based on some shout by the players of the old field hockey game, “Shin ye!” – that’s really helpful, now, isn’t it.

The shin, in any event, appears to come from the lower leg bone. So it’s pulled away from its direct sense and come back around to it again. Can you dig that?

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Fnu Lnu

Posted on July 15, 2013 | 3 comments

Does this look like fnu? I mean fun? What do you reckon it is? If you read the New York Times, you may already know the answer, but if you don’t, I’ll tell you that it’s a name for a person.

Not really a name like any you usually see, is it? Certainly it’s not in keeping with English phonotactics. Anglophones, looking at it, will tend to say “Fuh-noo Luh-noo.” Since we can’t start a syllable with /fn/ or /ln/, we tend by instinct to turn it into something that fits the rules of English pronunciation by stuffing in a vowel. This is like how an Italian speaker might say like as “like-a” or a Spanish speaker might say spoon as “espoon”: they’re not used to pronouncing the consonants in those positions, so they add a vowel to make it an allowable syllable.

There’s nothing intrinsically unpronounceable about /fn/ or /ln/. You can say toughness and wellness; those have the /fn/ and /ln/ across syllable boundaries, but you’re saying the sounds next to each other – syllables are mental, not physical, constraints. Say “ffff” and then break into “no”: “fffffffno!” It’s just a matter of getting used to it to make the /f/ shorter to say /fno/. Now say “helllllllno!” Drop the “he” and say “lllllno!” Same deal – just shorten the /l/ and make /lno/. It’s nothing other than mental barriers keeping us from say Fnu Lnu just as written.

It’s true that you don’t see /fn/ or /ln/ combinations in all that many languages. We have a combination similar to /fn/ in English: /sn/. But /s/ is more strident than /f/; it stands out more. It’s also two sounds made in the same place, whereas /fn/ moves from the teeth and lips to the tongue. So /sn/ is a little more likely to be found than /fn/, since /fn/ may over time shift to become /sn/ for ease and better sound. On the other hand, /ln/ is said in the same place – the tip of the tongue doesn’t move – but that’s part of the reason for its rarity: the lateral /l/ sounds almost too similar to /n/ when it’s next to it. You’re quite likely to get assimilation, so it becomes /ll/ or /nn/, and then maybe just /l/ or /n/. So both words, Fnu and Lnu, are possible and are not hard to say, but they are less likely to be found in a given language.

So what language is this name Fnu Lnu from?

Judi Tull, of the Newport News Daily Press, must have been wondering that in 1994 when she reported on an indictment containing the name. Not too long after the article went to press, she found out. And so on a subsequent day the newspaper published the following:

An article in Saturday’s Local section incorrectly reported that a suspect identified as “Fnu Lnu” had been indicted by a federal grand jury. “Fnu Lnu” is not a name. FNU is a law enforcement abbreviation for “first name unknown,” LNU for “last name unknown.” Officials knew the suspect only by the nickname ‘Dezo.’

In other words, Fnu Lnu is something that was just put in to fill a gap, and was misread. So, since it’s English, say it as you will. But really, if you say “fuh-noo luh-noo,” you’ll be reading in something that’s not there, just to fill a gap.

And, hey, I didn’t say it really was a person’s name. I just said I’ll tell you that it’s a name for a person.

A play called Fnu Lnu was written and produced off-Broadway, inspired by the erratum. And the abbreviation is still in use. Read more in the January 4, 1998, Daily Press and in the July 15, 2013, New York Times.

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Toto

Posted on July 15, 2013 | 1 comment

On the way back from a weekend at a friend’s cottage, we had Toto’s CD IV playing in the car – the one with “Rosanna” and “Africa” on it. I first bought that as a record when it came out, when I was in high school. Thanks to it, I always think of two things when I hear the word Toto. The other thing, of course, is Dorothy’s little dog from The Wizard of Oz.

If this word were written all in lower-case, it could look mathematical: +0+0. In all upper case, it can still look geometric: TOTO. As a capitalized word, it mixes it up a bit more – the bar slides from the top to the middle – but it still has those two o’s.

And actually it can be an uncapitalized word. Not in English – in Latin. It’s an inflected form of the word for ‘all’. You’ll see it borrowed into English in the phrase in toto, ‘in all’ or ‘completely’.

As a proper noun, it’s more than just the dog and the band. There’s an Indo-Bhutanese people living in West Bengal, India, who are called the Toto. Toto can also be a nickname for someone named Antonio or Salvatore. It was a common enough nickname a century ago that Frank Baum may have picked it for Dorothy’s dog just because it was a known name and he liked the sound. Whatever reason Baum used it (he doesn’t seem ever to have said), the musical group Toto got the name from the dog – but that was originally a placeholder name for their first studio recording project. They ultimately decided to keep it, and were likely also positively influenced by the all-encompassing Latin sense.

It’s a nice, simple name, anyway. Two taps of the tongue behind the teeth; the lips holding rounded. Replace the /t/ sounds with something else and you can get oh-oh, no-no, gogo, dodo, so-so, cocoa, yo-yo…

There’s one other Toto that I really should keep in mind, since it’s the one I look at several times a day. This one is a brand name, actually short for Toyo Toki, a Japanese company. They are the world’s biggest manufacturer of… toilets. I’m sure it’s just coincidence that toilet also starts with to (on the page; when it’s spoken, you have to treat the /ɔɪ/ as an ensemble). Anyway, we have two of their very good low-flow toilets (perhaps one for Dorothy, and one for her little dog too). They use barely enough water to melt the Wicked Witch of the West, but they still do their job very well.

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Linguistic invasion?

Posted on July 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

My latest piece for TheWeek.com looks at “foreign” words that have come to be important in our political and military English, and how they got there:

Linguistic invasion! The foreign influence of English’s political and military words

My next article will be about annoying noises people – adults, even – make and should stop making. Do you have any favourites? Let me know today or tomorrow if you can!

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bunting

Posted on July 11, 2013 | 1 comment

“Bye, baby bunting, Father’s gone a-hunting…”

You’ve probably heard or read that one sometime in your life, maybe around the same time as “See-saw, Margery Daw.” It may be the first thing that comes to your mind when you see bunting.

Bunting fits there; there aren’t a whole lot of rhymes for hunting, and this one has a /b/ to work with it, giving a nice bumping, bouncing sound, heavier than banter (or Banting) and less scrunchy than bunching, and sharper than bending. But, now, tell me: what exactly does bunting mean in that rhyme? There are several words bunting, with different meanings and apparently different origins (though they all have in common that the origin is uncertain…).

Perhaps it’s the bunting that refers to a kind of light, shiny fabric used for ribbons and flags and decorations at festivals and political events. These days it can be any of quite a few fabrics, often synthetic, but originally it was a kind of worsted wool. In a political race, the one who had not been bested got to bring out the worsted. But I don’t think that’s the bunting in the rhyme.

I’m pretty sure that the baby in question is not playing baseball, either, unless he’s a Babe Ruth. So we can rule out a relation to that verb bunt that refers to hitting a baseball without swinging the bat.

When a sail bunts, it’s not deflecting a ball; it’s swelling, bellying out in the middle. The word almost seems too hard for such a thing, but there it is: bunting can refer to the bellying or bulging of a sail, net, or similar thing. There is some suggestion that baby bunting may mean the kid is pudgy, perhaps fattening.

Or perhaps the baby is a bird of the family Emberizidae. These various types of buntings are small birds, rather like finches. We can imagine that Margery Daw might be a bird (specifically a daw, of course – wife of Jack Daw?), so perhaps baby bunting is, well, a baby bunting? But then there’s the issue of “Father’s gone a-hunting.” Buntings don’t really go hunting; they eat seeds, and such bugs as they might happen to get (depending on the species of bunting). But you may see a bunting on a hunting trip – as the hunted. In some places (notably around the Mediterranean), they shoot them. So that bye could be a rather permanent bye-bye.

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