clobber

Posted on January 14, 2009 | Leave a comment

Ever been hit on the ear? It sounds sort of like this word. (The word may even look like a promised clobbering: the c, holding the l as a club, sneaking up on the two b‘s from behind to beat them…) But of course there are many other words that sound sort of like this word, too: blubber, slobber, clubber, clapboard (pronounced the “old” way), lobster, glibber… Certainly the opening consonant makes some difference: the s in slobber is sloppy while the c in clobber is more percussive. It’s that opening stop that keeps this word from sounding flabby. And the spread of the voicelessness onto the l as we say it could be said to give a sense of motion. Naturally, it sounds rather akin to club, too. Perhaps that’s why, somewhere apparently in the 1940s, this word started being used to refer to beating, defeating, et cetera (bomber pilots seem to have used it first). Before that time clobber had been a word more associated with shoes and clothing: the verb referred to patching up and cobbling, and subsequently to adding enamelled decoration; it in turn may have come from a noun clobber that meant a paste used by cobblers to fill cracks in shoes. Another noun clobber was slang for clothes. All of these showed up in the 19th century, and the clothing one, at least, can still be seen rarely today. And lexicographers aren’t sure where any of them came from. Not the current sense either. Hm!

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pacific

Posted on January 13, 2009 | 1 comment

This word has a sea of collocations, nearly all of which go with the proper noun taken from it (rim, standard time, islander, northwest, and quite a few others, including, of course, Ocean; blockade, on the other hand, can pair with the lower-case version). Many people might easily forget – or never know in the first place – that it is a common adjective, too, and not one to do with water per se. The word seems somewhat soft, thanks to the two fricatives in the middle, but with the stops at either end it gains an acuity – perhaps it seems more specific. All the consonants are voiceless, making a white noise perhaps a bit like a sea sound heard at a distance. It leads off with a p, proper and patrician or popular and pretty, let your taste decide. But the most interesting sight is the palindrome cific. Is this like a wave? Two portholes with a funnel? Or a train engine of the eponymous class? Perhaps the f is a palm tree and the i‘s are islands, all surrounded by open c. And when one thinks of the Pacific Ocean, does one think of a peaceful, calm body of water? Well, Ferdinand Magellan did, as that was how it was when he first got there in 1520, and so the Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish soon came to call it the Mar Pacifico. But how do we get from “peaceful” to pacific or pacifico? Well, Latin for “peaceful” is pacificus, from pax. Ironically, this sea that was a major theatre of the Second World War is an adjectival form and near-twin of pacifism. But have you ever thought of pacifism when seeing the name Pacific? Just what effect do these overtones and echoes have? Well, somewhat more when you think of them, that’s for sure. And what might be the unconscious influences of these unnoticed hints and aftertastes? A very good question indeed.

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chilblain

Posted on January 12, 2009 | Leave a comment

This might seem like a word for the border crossing between BC and Washington where the I-95 and 99 meet: chill to the north, Blaine to the south. Well, the chill is right, and no doubt some people, on knowing what blain means, might think it accurate as well. This is not a word we hear much anymore; we seem able, with the aid of Thinsulate, good sense and central heating, to avoid its object. Yet we still see it in literature, typically used as though everyone were familiar with it (is this a good time to mention that I had also been reading of the disease consumption for years before I realized it was tuberculosis?). Well, what do we have, then? To look at, this word is a forest of ascenders and dots – only three out of nine letters are x-height. Not a descender in the bunch, though. Perhaps, in conjunction with chill, we will see this as iconic of horripilation. And the components of this word? It might lead your eyes to child, and certainly children, with their lesser good sense, are perhaps more likely to get chilblains. The sound carries a small echo of complain, and that’s not inappropriate. But a blain – a word by itself, though good luck trying to find it in use anywhere – is a swelling or sore. Its roots go right back to Teutonic. As do those of chill, which, this may be a good time to say, was used as the word to refer to cold until the 14th century, when it was replaced over time by cold; its noun form then fell into desuetude for two centuries until it was revived as a nominalization of the verb chill, which itself had only been converted from the noun in the 14th century… and not used all that much until two centuries later, when, it seems, the noun and verb together made quite a comeback. And isn’t that just what you had always wanted, for chill to make a comeback? Well, it did. Now mind you don’t get chilblains.

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An historic(al) usage trend: a historical usage trend (part 1)

Posted on January 11, 2009 | 6 comments

Update: I have now posted an HTML version of the full paper, finally. It’s at sesquiotic.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/an-historic/.

This the first part of a longer paper. This part, the introduction, is the most concise introduction to the issue; the second part covers the history; after that it goes into more technical depth with a survey of current attitudes that I conducted. The full text of the paper, with the references, is available as a PDF.

One of the most regular and inflexible rules of English is the one governing which version of the indefinite article to use in a given context. It is a useful thing to have an understanding of the rule, and it would take less than an hour to learn a habit of choosing according to the sound of the following word: a before a consonant, as in habit, but also before a consonant sound written as a vowel, as in useful; an before a vowel, as in understanding, but also before a silent consonant (inevitably h) followed by a vowel, as in hour. Although in some dialects a is used before vowels as well, this usage is considered nonstandard and is generally looked down upon (notwithstanding which it has occasionally been predicted that this will be the ultimate use everywhere – see, for example, the editor’s note following Bolinger 1975). An before a consonant would be considered a mark of a nonnative speaker.

There is, however, a salient exception. Continue reading →

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frabjous

Posted on January 11, 2009 | Leave a comment

A word you can play in Scrabble even though its meaning is less than perfectly agreed upon. It has the merit, at least, of being among that special set of words the origin of which is known exactly: in this case, Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky,” from Through the Looking-Glass (1871). And Carroll has indicated the blend on which he based it. But before I tell you what he thought it should mean, let me ask you to taste it and think of what it seems to you it should mean. In spite of the tone of its use in “Jabberwocky,” we see it used by Rudyard Kipling in phrases such as “frabjous asses” and “frabjously immoral,” and the Oxford English Dictionary has found a 1935 “frabjously late.” Well. The tone of those uses notwithstanding, it almost seems fabulous to me, but with a definite taste of raspberry aided by the French for the same, framboise. The juiciness of jous also comes in, though it might look like joust and sound like just. On the other hand, it has a definite echo of fractious and perhaps hints of frazzle and grab. It may seem slightly odd in form, but those who think the jammed b and j un-English would do best to abjure such ideas. It has a nice incipient spirality by grace of the curved ascender of f and descender of j. And if, like Alice, you find “Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don’t exactly know what they are,” I may as well reveal to you that Carroll, it is reported, had fair, fabulous and joyous in mind when he wrote “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy.” Oh, yes, chortled – another of the several words introduced to English by that poem. Only people seem actually to know and agree on what chortle means.

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guar

Posted on January 10, 2009 | 2 comments

If you read ingredient lists on labels, you’ll likely recognize this word and think of its usual partner, gum. Otherwise, you may think it a typo for a Hindustani ox, a sentry, or a raunchy thrash metal/punk band, or perhaps a clip out of a rough Spanish brandy.* The act of saying it involves roughly the same oral gesture as sucking on a straw, but wider open, but it has not the voicelessly crisp onset of quoi or choir bur rather the meaty, sticky [g] that makes it sound so similar to gore. The gu may give a taste of gum (to see) or goo (to hear); given the thickening properties of guar gum, this is apposite. But the guar is not simply a gum plant; actually, it’s a legume, often eaten as such in India, where the word and the thing come from. The word, for its part, has been chewed and reduced over the years, the Hindi guar coming from Sanskrit gopali, which in turn comes from gopalakarkati, meaning “cowherder’s cucumber,” the beginning of which comes from gauh, “cow,” which also gives us gaur, the enormous bovine that might be found chewing on guar beans.

*gaur, guard, Gwar, aguardiente

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An Appreciation of English: A language in motion

Posted on January 9, 2009 | 21 comments

This is the text of a presentation I made at the Editors’ Association of Canada Conference in Vancouver, June 10, 2006. It came with a handout, “A brief history of English,” which is available as a PDF. It traces the history and development of the English language and the nature and function of language change.
Continue reading →

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inlandish

Posted on January 9, 2009 | 1 comment

The introverted sibling of outlandish. None of this shouting out here; while the first syllable of outlandish combines with its sense to encourage an expansive [æ] in the land, the high front vowels and alveolar nasals and liquid combine with the sense of inlandish to keep a rein on the land. Those n‘s spread their nasality to the proximate vowels, too, giving the whole first two syllables a comfy sinus hum. The ish these days tends to have an iffy tone, thanks to its free use to signify mere approximation and similitude (prettyish, fortyish), though some may also remember the negative tones of such words as popish and swinish. There is an extra bit of delight, however, in the presence of dish, a generally welcome word. The land is such a widely used word that it carries a very wide variety of flavours, with a general orientation to home and soil and realm. The in sets the tone; it even gives a containing n to contrast with the open u in out (and it is inside the i rather than being outside a t). Of course, those who see this word will instantly think of outlandish and may well consider inlandish a necessarily humorous word simply meant to contrast, like clement weather and gruntled employees. But it is attested quite ingenuously – in a literal sense: pertaining to the interior of a country; domestic, native. One simply does not see inlandish behaviour. Pity. Evidently such behaviour would be as unremarkable as the phrase would be remarkable. As to the roots of this word: purely inlandish themselves, as long as you consider Anglo-Saxon inlandish (before the 7th century, it was outlandish in Britain, but then the Celts were conquered, and much water has passed under the bridge since then). And their senses have not really changed, either (though land has broadened its meaning some). In short, it is quite a conservative word – and not an especially xenial one.

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bulldoze

Posted on January 8, 2009 | 4 comments

The sense of this word might have one thinking it’s straightforward in every way. The sound seems right enough: the mouth-pop of bull, a word often used like a verbal fist, and the broken-nose machine buzz of doze. You can even see the progress of the equipment: the ascenders are being levelled from the left side… or perhaps bull is the machine, with the ll the front shovel, pushing against doze, which itself has an aspect of machinery moving leftward, with the o and e as wheels. But a pause to look at the sense will give just a beginning of a hint that it might be more complicated. If we think of a large earth-moving machine, we can see how the intransigent, inexorable, ineluctable vector of a forward-moving bull might equate. But what does doze have to do with it? The bull is lumbering, not slumbering! Well, you’re in for a dose of surprise. A real horse pill, in fact. When we speak of someone pushing through opposition or intimidating it as bulldozing, it’s not originally a metaphor based on the earth-moving equipment; it’s the other way around: the machinery is named after the human action. People were bulldozing opposition a half-century before they were ever bulldozing land. OK, but where does that come from? From bull-dose – a dose strong enough for a bull. Of what? Originally of whipping: an incredibly brutal lashing, enough to kill a man, or nearly so. Threat of such a whipping was used in 1876 to coerce southern US blacks into voting Democrat, or at least not voting Republican (yes, that’s right – remember, just over a decade earlier Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president). From that came the sense of coercion (and, along the way, a change of the s to a z); the first bulldozers were people, and sometimes guns, too. From pushing people around it expanded to pushing things around. And now a dose fit for a bull is delivered to the earth, typically by a Caterpillar.

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cubicle

Posted on January 7, 2009 | Leave a comment

Not necessarily a friendly word. It has a functional edge, with its apparent cube root (how mathematical) and resonances of queue and Bic, but cubes may make one think of ice, especially icicle, and the bic when it runs on to icle may put one in a pickle. The echo of tickle seems rather weak; fickle, with its f closer to the b, might come to mind sooner. Other rhymes may give a sense of excess testosterone. The shape of the word seems to mirror its object: the two c‘s and the u are shaped rather like many a cubicle seen on a floor plan, while the word as a whole looks like a side view, with the b and l forming walls (with a desk, and the c doubling as chair) and the i boxed inside, perhaps about to prairie-dog. Or perhaps about to nod off… which would be appropriate, etymologically, since that’s what a cubicle first was: a bedchamber. You see, this word doesn’t actually come from cube (which the Latins took from the Greek word for a die, as in the gaming item); it comes from Latin cubiculum, from cubare, “recline.” And, frankly, looking around an office mid-afternoon, in spite of all the hard surfaces and this hard-seeming word, you may find it hasn’t shifted very far in meaning after all…

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