Monthly Archives: January 2009

My Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day was a grab bag of entries, including one on licorice. I was more interested in the second half of the entry:

• licorice (/LiK-uh-rish/) is the standard spelling. “Liquorice” is a variant form. This word shouldn’t be confused with its uncommon homophones, “lickerish” (= lascivious, lecherous) and “liquorish” (= tasting like liquor). (Emphasis added.)
  

According to the OED, lickerish and liquorish are altered forms of lickerous. It originally was related to the desire for good food or pleasing things, but those meanings are obsolete, leaving only the lustful meaning in the modern day. Lickerish/lickerous/liquorish has these definitions:

• 1a. (Obsolete) Pleasing or tempting to the palate. Also: Sweet, pleasant, delightful.
• 1b. (Obsolete) Of a cook: Skilful in preparing dainties.
• 2a. (Obsolete) Of persons, the appetite, etc.: Fond of choice or delicious food; dainty in eating; greedy of good fare.
• 2b. (Obsolete) Having a keen relish or desire for something pleasant. Also: eager to do something.
• 3. Lecherous, lustful, wanton.

Lickerous has this etymology: “From the Anglo-French. likerous, lekerous, representing a northern variation of Old French lecheros, meaning lecherous; compare to Old Northern French liquerie = Central Old French lecherie, meaning lechery.”

These are old words. The OED’s first quotation for lickerous is from 1275, and the first for lickerish is from around 1500.

Liquorish, according to the OED, has another meaning besides the one Garner gives (tasting like liquor) and that of lickerish/lickerous/liquorish. The OED says it can mean “fond of or indicating fondness for liquor,” which is “an etymologizing sense-perversion of lickerish.”

Sense-perversion? That, like the rest of this post, sounds vaguely dirty.

That’s the view out my window from my couch, where I’ve been parked since yesterday morning. I have a mild cold or something, sore throat and a little congested. Not enough to keep me in bed, although more than enough to get me out of shoveling in this mess. Bonus. Of course, the past two days were also my weekend this week. Nothing’s worse than being sick on the weekend. Even when it’s Tuesday and Wednesday.

Anyway, here’s some interesting things I’ve read while I’ve been slumping about my apartment under the gentle care of Halls Mentho-Lyptus® honey lemon cough drops with Advanced Vapor Action®:

• John McIntyre lists 25 facts about editing at You Don’t Say. Two that I wholeheartedly agree with: 22. You are allowed three exclamation points in your entire career. (I have yet to use any of mine.) And 24. Editing is just about the most fun you can have legally.
• Craig Lancaster of Watch Yer Language discusses the Addictionary, which “gives folks an outlet to find and submit words that are as yet unrecognized by the authority dictionaries and yet have some currency for someone, somewhere.”
• The New York Times reports that The Washington Post is killing its Sunday books section, Book World. Here’s the leaked memo. Damn shame. I liked Book World when I had a chance to look at it.

And my lights just flickered, so I am going to wrap this up. Power’s been going out around town as ice snaps the lines.

JD from the excellent Engine Room Blog (which I have been meaning to link to) posted a comment on my post about the New York Times story on places in Britain with dodgy names. He links to a story from the Independent last year about a village called Shitterton. ‘Nuff said. And check out the Engine Room. It’s a good read from a British sub-editor’s perspective. (That’s what they call copy editors over there.)

In a New York Times piece, Steven Pinker — who is chairman of  The American Heritage Dictionary’s usage panel — discussed Chief Justice John Roberts’ flub of the oath of office at Obama’s inauguration. Pinker says it is a product of Roberts’ adherence to one of those grammar rules that aren’t: that’s you can’t split infinitives.

The Constitution calls for this wording in the oath: “That I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States.” But Roberts said: “That I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully.”

Pinker says the explanation of the error “is that the wayward adverb in the passage is blowback from Chief Justice Roberts’s habit of grammatical niggling.” The false rule that Roberts is following here is “the prohibition against ‘split verbs,’ in which an adverb comes between an infinitive marker like ‘to,’ or an auxiliary like ‘will,’ and the main verb of the sentence.”

Pinker explains that many lawyers have this problem because of a faulty style guide:

• Though the ungrammaticality of split verbs is an urban legend, it found its way into The Texas Law Review Manual on Style, which is the arbiter of usage for many law review journals. James Lindgren, a critic of the manual, has found that many lawyers have “internalized the bogus rule so that they actually believe that a split verb should be avoided.”

It’s not just lawyers. As I’ve written before, Winston Churchill (described in Rick Atkinson’s Day of Battle) liked to lecture on the “wickedness of splitting infinitives.”

I got a flat tire last night, so I’m off to get it patched (hopefully) or replaced (not so much). It got me to wondering where the word tire came from.

The OED’s  first entry on tire contains six definitions that have to do with clothing and related things, as in attire, which is where the word tire itself comes from. The first, obsolete definition in this entry for tire is “Apparatus, equipment, accoutrement, outfit: = Attire.”

The second entry for tire has to do with the wheel. The etymology refers back to the first entry’s first definition:

• “Probably the same word as preceding entry, the tire being originally (sense 1) the ‘attire’, ‘clothing’, or ‘accoutrement’ of the wheel. From 15th to 17th century spelt (like preceding) tire and tyre indifferently. Before 1700 tyre became generally obsolete, and tire remained as the regular form, as it still does in America; but in Great Britain tyre was revived in the nineteenth century as the popular term for the rubber rim of bicycle, tricycle, carriage, or motor-car wheels, and is sometimes used for the steel tires of locomotive wheels. During the twentieth century tyre became standard in the British Isles.”

A tire was originally a metal rim around a cart wheel, and its rubber cousin got its name from that. Here are the relevant definitions:

1. 1. collective singular. now obsolete. The curved pieces of iron plate, called strakes or streaks, placed end to end or overlapping, with which cart and carriage wheels were formerly shod (now rarely used, and only for heavy agricultural vehicles, artillery carriages, etc.).
2. 2. a. A rim of metal encompassing the wheel of a vehicle, consisting of a continuous circular hoop of iron or steel.
3. 2. b. An endless cushion of rubber, solid, hollow, or tubular, fitted (usually in combination with an inner tube filled with compressed air) on the rim of a bicycle, tricycle, or motor-car; now also often upon the wheels of invalid and baby-carriages, and light horse vehicles.

The New York Times has a great story about places in Britain with rude names:

• “These include Crotch Crescent, Oxford; Titty Ho, Northamptonshire; Wetwang, Yorkshire; Slutshole Lane, Norfolk; and Thong, Kent.”

There’s a lot more in the story. It’s hilarious.

On Monday in an interview with Politico, Ben Affleck slammed Newsweek for an old cover story that reflected favorably on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (the cover called him King Henry). Among Affleck’s criticisms, he said this:

• “They did like this hagiography on Paulson. Did you read that?”

A hagiography, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is:

1. 1. Biography of saints.
2. 2. A worshipful or idealizing biography.

It comes from the Greek hagio-, meaning holy, and -graphy, meaning writing. I think the second meaning of hagiography is a clever extension of the first. It’s also an old one, going back at least 10 1821, according to the OED.

Here’s some other interesting hagio- and hagi- words from the OED:

• hagiarchy: the rule or order of saints.
• hagi-heroical: characterized by saintly heroism.
• hagiomania: saintly madness; a mania for sainthood.
• hagio-romance: the romance of a saint’s legend.
• hagiotypic: pertaining to types of saints.
• hagiolotry: the worship of saints.
• hagioscope: A small opening, cut through a chancel arch or wall, to enable worshippers in an aisle or side chapel to obtain a view of the elevation of the host; a squint; also, sometimes applied to a particular kind of window in the chancel of a church.

I recently discovered that I have long misunderstood the word pithy. I had thought it meant speech or writing that is insubstantial, shallow, long-winded, and poorly-written. In fact, it means the opposite. From the OED:

• 2. a. Of language or style: full of concentrated meaning; conveying meaning forcibly through brevity of expression; concise, succinct; condensed in style; pointed, terse, aphoristic.

I’m not sure why I misunderstood it. My two made-up excuses are that the first time I heard it, it was being used sarcastically and I didn’t realize that. Or, it’s because pithy sounds like a negative word. It has an air of pathetic and pity to it.

Pithy comes from the word pith. When being used literally, the OED tells us pith means:

• 1. The soft internal tissue of a plant part; esp. a central cylinder of parenchyma in a stem or root. Also: a layer of spongy tissue lining the rind in certain fruits, especially citrus fruits, in which it is white and often bitter-tasting.
• 2. a. The soft interior tissue of an organ or animal structure; esp. the spongy core of a feather-shaft or the core of a horn.
• 2. b. The substance occupying the spinal canal; the spinal cord.

That leads to these abstract uses:

• 4. a. The innermost or central part of a thing; the essential or vital part; the spirit or essence; the core, the nub. Frequently in pith and marrow.
• 4. b. to the pith: thoroughly, to the very core. (Obsolete usage)
• 5. a. Physical strength or force; vigour, might; toughness, strength of character; mettle, backbone.
• 5. b. Force, power, energy (of words, speech, etc.). In later use chiefly: the quality of conveying meaning forcibly through brevity of expression; succinctness, conciseness.

From Library of Congress

Pith also gives us pith helmet, which is “A lightweight hat made from dried pith and worn in tropical countries for protection from the sun.” (American Heritage Dictionary). Like the one Teddy Roosevelt is wearing here in a 1910 hunting trip to Africa.

The OED says pith is a cognate* with the  “Middle Low German peddik, peddek, (rare) piddek medulla, bone marrow, spinal cord, inner part of a horn or quill.” It goes on say:

• Perhaps compare also West Frisian pit kernel of a fruit, medulla, energy (probably < Dutch), Middle Dutch pit kernel, stone of a fruit (1484; Dutch pit, pitte kernel, pip, stone of a fruit, pith, spirit, body), German regional (Low German: East Friesland) pit marrow, kernel, innermost or best part, strength. These show a different final consonant which would make them difficult to account for as cognates; the Dutch and German words do, however, show a semantic development very similar to that in English.

* The OED says a cognate, when referring to words, means: “Coming naturally from the same root, or representing the same original word, with differences due to subsequent separate phonetic development.”

In one of my first entries on this blog, I wrote (briefly) about enormity, specifically Barack Obama’s use of it to mean “enormousness” as opposed to “great wickedness.” Back then, I said “I think enormity’s meaning is being lost, and there’s not much to be done about it. Too bad, because a word that means ‘great wickedness’ is a fun word indeed.”

Kathy Schenck of Words to the Wise talked about the issue in much better detail on Tuesday:

A week from today, Barack Obama will give another historic speech. Will he make the same error he made in his election night address?

“I do not underestimate the enormity of the task that lies ahead,” Obama said that night in November. It was not the first time he used enormity to mean enormousness, and it likely will not be the last.

When the Ivy League-educated incoming U.S. president “misuses” a word over and over, sticklers might decide it’s time to let go.

She gets in a lot of good citations in the full post.

John McIntyre of You Don’t Say said his piece on it yesterday:

I use the word in its strict sense; it’s a useful word to have in stock. I teach my students that there is a distinction here that fastidious writers observe. But I can’t ignore that the other sense appears to have become prevalent and that no one misunderstands it. No one imagines that Mr. Obama meant that he intended to embark on a task of great wickedness. (Oh, all right, sure there are, but I don’t read those blogs or listen to those radio shows.) I can think it regrettable that the two usages coexist and that the one appears to be crowding out the other; but when the speaker’s or writer’s meaning is always clear in context, it seems pointless to carry on about it. It may not even be justifiable to call it an error, and it’s certainly not an enormity.

As a newspaperman, one of my favorite lines in the Spider-Man movies came in the first movie in an exchange between Peter Parker and the editor of the Daily Bugle:

Peter Parker: Spider-Man wasn’t trying to attack the city, he was trying to save it. That’s slander.
J. Jonah Jameson: It is not. I resent that. Slander is spoken. In print, it’s libel.

As a journalism student, you learn that rule early when they are drilling the ethics into you. As a copy editor, you learn to keep your eye out for the use of both words to make sure they are used correctly. But I was wondering last night where the distinction comes from and decided to check out etymologies in the OED.

A libel used to be a ” A little book; a short treatise or writing.” This meaning is obsolete but comes from the etymology: Libel is an Old French word that comes from the Latin libellus, which is the diminutive (meaning smaller version) of liber, which means book. Other obsolete meanings from the OED include:

• A written paper.
• A formal document, a written declaration or statement.
• A leaflet, bill, or pamphlet posted up or publicly circulated; spec. one assailing or defaming the character of some person (in early use more fully, famous libel = Law Latin libellus famosus).

As a noun, it has three definitions in the OED:

• In Civil Law: The writing or document of the plaintiff containing his allegations and instituting a suit. In Ecclesiastical Law: The first plea, or the plaintiff’s written declaration or charges, in a cause. In Scottish Law: The form of complaint or ground of the charge on which either a civil or criminal prosecution takes place.
• Any published statement damaging to the reputation of a person. In wider sense, any writing of a treasonable, seditious, or immoral kind. Also, the act or crime of publishing such a statement or writing.
• In popular use: Any false and defamatory statement in conversation or otherwise. Transferred sense: applied to a portrait that does the sitter injustice, or to a thing or circumstance that tends to bring undeserved ill repute on a person, a country, etc.

The second of those definitions is the one that J. Jonah Jameson, and all newspaper journalists, chiefly concern themselves with, since our stock in trade is published statements and defaming someone with them can get us sued.

All this shows libel is firmly rooted in the written word.

On to slander.

Slander comes from the Anglo-French esclaundre, from the Old French esclandre, an alteration of escandle, an adaptation of the Latin scandalum, which means a “cause of offense or stumbling.”

OED’s first definition of slander is: “The utterance or dissemination of false statements or reports concerning a person, or malicious misrepresentation of his actions, in order to defame or injure him; calumny, defamation.” The second is very close to that, describing the thing itself rather than the act: “A false or malicious statement or utterance intended to injure, defame, or cast detraction on the person about whom it is made.”

Some obsolete meanings of slander:

• A source of shame or dishonour; a discreditable act; a disgrace; a wrong.
• A person who is a discredit, disgrace, or scandal to some body or set of persons.
• A cause of moral lapse or fall; a stumbling-block. = scandal n. 1b, offense

Slander seems less firmly rooted in the spoken word than libel is in the written. From the etymologies and definitions, it seems that all libelous statements are also slanderous, but not all slander is libel.

But I’ll stick with J. Jonah Jameson.