Etymology Archives

In Other Words

July 10, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a language lover’s guide to intriguing foreign words

This is a book for people who love words – no matter what their origin. In Other Words collects some of the most intriguing and peculiar expressions from countries around the globe for which there are no easy English equivalents. There is an expression in Japanese for instance which describes the particular stress the people there feel when speaking another language. But translated literally, Yokomeshi is ‘a meal eaten sideways’. Yoko means ‘horizontal’ and meshi means ‘boiled rice’. The explanation (and joke) is that Japanese language is normally written vertically. Makes sense now, doesn’t it?

Entries are listed alphabetically by country, and the languages covered include East and West Europe, Nordic, Middle Eastern, African, Asian, and Creole and Pidgin languages. The entries for each group are prefaced by a short essay outlining examples of contemporary usages and problems.

Examples include explanations of terms which have been commonly taken up in English such as enfant terrible and doppelganger, as well as those special terms for which there is no English equivalent, such as the German Torschlusspanik (literally ‘door-shutting panic’) for which the nearest would be ‘fear of being left on the shelf’, and the Yiddish luftmensch – literally somebody who lives on air, but figuratively a person who sponges off those around him.

Actually, some of the examples he offers disprove his own thesis about translatability. The Italian attaccabottone (literally ‘button attacker’) is exactly as the person who in English ‘buttonholes’ you to relate some long tale of woe.

It doesn’t have the in-depth comprehensiveness of a reference such as The Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases, but it offers much longer and quite amusing explanations.

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C.J. Moore, In Other Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp.127, ISBN: 0192806246

Port Out, Starboard Home

July 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

folk etymologies and false word histories explained

This is a book of folk-etymologies, false-etymologies, pseudo-etymologies – call them what you will. As Michael Quinion explains, once a colourful explanation for the origin of a term is offered, it’s hard to shift, no matter how flawed it might be. His book title Port Out, Starboard Home is taken from one of the most famous – the assumption that the word ‘posh’ is an acronym from reservations made with the old steamship companies servicing the British Empire. The story seems plausible, and it’s attractive – but it’s not true.

He covers lots of others such as honeymoon (nothing to do with honey) Elephant and Castle (which actually has connections with one of my local towns, Bolton) and Jerusalem Artichoke, which is not an artichoke and isn’t from Jerusalem. En route he takes you through some interesting byways – such as the reasonably well known example of British servicemen in the First World War converting ca ne fait rien into san fairy ann.

Entries run from akimbo to Zzxjoanw, which was passed off for years as a Maori name for a drum – despite the fact that there is no Z, X, or J in the Maori alphabet.

He gives detailed and plausible explanations for difficult cases such as the Big Apple (New York) and you would hardly believe how much can be written about the origins of apparently simple words such as aluminium and jazz.

So in a typical example, such as Ballyhoo for instance, he lists all the supposed explanations for the word’s origins – then quietly explodes them as myths, and substitutes either a reasonable explanation, or an admission that we simply don’t know. The same is true for expressions such as break a leg, for which he gives several possible explanations, before coming up with the the most plausible.

Michael Quinion is a scholar, and as a researcher for the Oxford English Dictionary he knows his stuff. He cites his sources and he knows the etymological history of language back to the early Renaiassance. But I don’t agree with him that the negative should be removed from all mouth and no trousers.

And he also keep a very good web site at www.worldwidewords.org – from which many of these examples are drawn. I visit regularly when I get stuck, and I’m rarely disappointed. The site also has a weekly newsletter which gives updates on issues to do with problems, difficult words, and complications in English Language. But like most people, I like having something between hard covers.

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Michael Quinion, Port Out, Starboard Home and other language myths, London: Penguin, new edition 2005, pp.304, ISBN: 0141012234

Troublesome Words

May 31, 2009 by Roy Johnson

A-Z of problematic English words – with explanations

Before he became a best-selling travel writer, Bill Bryson worked as a sub-editor on The Times. This is a successful guide to problems of English language he wrote for journalists at the time, now updated and in its third edition. It’s arranged on an A to Z basis – running from abbreviations and acronyms, through mean and median (know the difference?) to wondrous, years’ time, and zoom. He explains words we commonly misunderstand, words we confuse, tricky issues such as foreign terms, and points of grammar such as split infinitives. And he does this with all the verve and wit which have made him such a well-loved writer.

He’s particularly good at showing the subtle distinctions between similar words (such as amid and amongst) and words which are easily confused (such as blatant and flagrant).

I couldn’t agree with him on data being a plural noun – but he does invite readers to challenge his judgements. You have to be on your intellectual toes. Sometimes his explanations are rather cryptic

Comprise means to contain. The whole comprises the parts and not vice versa.

But the correlative of this is that he packs a lot in. And occasionally this terseness works entirely to his advantage:

When something is not working properly, it is defective; when it is missing a necessary part, it is deficient.

The reason there are all these problems with English is that we have so many different terms for the same thing. Bill Bryson explains all this in his other excellent book Mother Tongue, to which this is a follow-up. He also throws in all sorts of extras – such as how to pronounce the name of the fish coelacanth (see-luh-kanth).

You will almost certainly learn about the meaning of words you never thought about before. Did you know the difference between ‘expectorate’ and ‘spit’ for instance?

There’s a very good bibliography and a glossary. Anybody interested in sharpening their writing skills will profit from reading this book. It’s a reference guide, a tutorial, and a very entertaining insight into language niceties for the general reader.

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Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words, London: Penguin Books, 3rd edn, 2009, pp.256, ISBN: 0141040394

a language lover’s guide to intriguing foreign words

folk etymologies and false word histories explained

A-Z of problematic English words – with explanations

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