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worldwidewords.org
WWW - World Wide Words
Michael Quinion
about international English from a British viewpoint
The English language - its history, quirks, curiosities and evolution

The English language is forever changing. New words appear; old ones fall out of use or alter their meanings. World Wide Words tries to record at least a part of this shifting wordscape by featuring new words, word histories, words in the news, and the curiosities of native English speech.

After 20 years writing about the peculiarities and evolution of the English language, I stopped suddenly and finally early in 2017. Truth be told, after 930 issues of my weekly newsletter I was becoming written out. Every week that passed made writing more of a chore and less of a pleasure. So I shall no longer be sending out newsletters nor adding or updating pages on the site.
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How Words Enter the Language

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In the world of today’s lexicography, usage is king. We are, in the language of the business, descriptive dictionary makers: we record, we collate, we analyse, and we describe what people actually say and write. If enough English speakers decide that some word or phrase has value, to the extent that those who encounter it are likely to need to consult the dictionary in search of its meaning, then it is put into new editions. Not always very quickly — there is merit in taking one’s time to build up a picture of usage and so avoid being misled by temporary enthusiasms and short-lived fashion. And if enough speakers decide that a word no longer means what the dictionaries say it means but something else entirely, then we have to note that, too. You may feel that such changes amount to misuse — and certainly terms do change because of ignorance or misunderstandings — but that’s largely irrelevant to the job of the dictionary maker.
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Some people hate this anarchy so much that there are occasional calls for a body to regulate the language, control what should be in and what out, and to advise users on what is good English and bad. The example of the "Académie Française" is often put in evidence. The Académie attempts to maintain the purity of the French language (for example, by providing lists of French words that are suitable alternatives to the influx of English neologisms, such as replacing "tie-break" with "jeu décisif", "walkman" with "baladeur", or "software" with "logiciel"), but its influence, though great, has not been decisive.

There have been determined attempts to amend the way people use languages: Noah Webster was influential in changing some spellings in the United States after the 1820s; Kemal Atatürk changed Turkish to the Latin script in 1928 and removed many borrowings from other languages; the Singapore government has instituted a Speak Good English session every April to persuade local people to use international English rather than their own patois called "Singlish"; there have recently been spelling changes in both Dutch and German. Making that kind of change requires political will and muscle and is hard even then. Canute had it right — there are some tides which authority is unable easily to resist or control.
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So, no English Academy, I’m afraid. No huddles of earnest scholars, debating the current crop of neologisms (like "bonkbuster") and marking them with the tick of official acceptance or the cross of oblivion. Just a number of individual dictionary editors, trying to make sense of an inchoate mass of material thrown up by shifts in fashion, personal usage, inventive genius, new technologies, and a dozen other factors. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.

*The OED’s definition of bonkbuster: “A type of popular novel characterized by frequent explicit sexual encounters between the characters. Popularized by the British writer Sue Limb, writing under the pseudonym ‘Dulcie Domum’, in her humorous newspaper column ‘Bad Housekeeping’ (1990-2001)”. The word is from the common British slang "bonk" for “an act of sexual intercourse”, on the model of "blockbuster".

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Newsletter back-issues

2017 04 Mar - 2011 17 Dec

March 2017 - December 1998

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Pronunciation Guide

This list contains the main sounds of standard British English (the one that’s associated with southern England, also often called Received Pronunciation). The "International Phonetic Alphabet" ("IPA") symbols appear on my Web pages; the text equivalents are for my weekly e-mail newsletters. See the bottom of the page for some important notes.

Consonants

The following letters have their usual values in English:

b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w, z.
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Quinion, Michael - Gall
Gallimaufry
A Hodgepodge of Our Vanishing Vocabulary

gallimaufry (noun)

• 1. a dish made up of leftovers
• 2. a miscellaneous jumble or medley

From the cover

Words are always changing, and here best-selling language writer Michael Quinion has made his own selection of some of the most interesting examples of words and meanings that are vanishing from our vocabulary. Sometimes a word is lost when the thing it describes becomes obsolete: would you wear a billycock? Sometimes it survives in a figurative sense while the original meaning is lost: what was the first paraphernalia? Sometimes it simply gives way to a more popular alternative: who still goes to the picture house to watch the talkies? The story of these and many other words is brought vividly to life by the author, and illustrated by numerous historical references and quotations from writers down the years, including Samuel Pepys and Jane Austen, William Shakespeare and Patrick O’Brian.

An extract from the book

Two of the three classic styles of men’s headwear of the period were actually popularised by actresses. The fedora, later to be the classic topping of the Italian-American mobster, was named after the title and main character in a famous play by the French playwright Victorien Sardou, first performed in 1882 with Sarah Bernhardt as the hat-wearing Russian princess Fédora Romanov. The name of the trilby comes from a play adapted by the American Paul Potter from a book by George du Maurier. The latter had been an immense hit when it came out in 1894, as a writer in the New York Tribune in March 1895 wailed:

We are beset by a veritable epidemic of Trilby fads. Trilby bonnets and gowns and shoes, Trilby accents of speech and Trilby poses of person. Trilby tableaux, teas and dances. Trilby ice cream and Trilby sermons, Trilby clubs and reading classes and prize examinations, Trilby nomenclature for everybody and everything.

The play was brought over to London in November 1895 by the impresario Beerbohm Tree and was a huge success, ensuring that the hat worn by the bare-footed, chain-smoking, 20-year-old leading lady Dorothea Baird would become part of the British Trilby craze. Her picture, wearing that hat, appeared on postcards, in advertisements, on chocolate boxes, and in newspapers.

Women’s hats of the period also had names with literary associations. The Dolly Varden was large, with one side bent down, “abundantly trimmed with flowers” as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it. The name came from the coquettish character in Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge. The fashion for it started about 1872, but it was not universally popular, it would seem, to judge from a snooty comment in The Athens Messenger (the one in Ohio) in May that year:

The maids of Athens, and the matrons too, do not take to Dolly Vardens worth a cent.

In the same month, Harper’s Weekly commented,

Was ever any new costume more criticized than the new ‘Dolly Varden’.

Another a little later was the Merry Widow, an ornate and wide-brimmed hat whose style and name derived from the hat worn by Lily Elsie in the London premiere of Franz Lehar’s operetta in June 1907. The show made Ms Elsie a star and the focus of a craze, just as happened with Dorothea Baird a decade earlier. Her picture—wearing that hat, of course—appeared very widely in advertisements and picture postcards. This style was as common in the US as in Britain; Wu Tingfang wrote in confusion in his book America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat in 1914 that

There you will see women wearing ‘Merry Widow’ hats who are not widows but spinsters, or married women whose husbands are very much alive, and the hats in many cases are as large as three feet in diameter.

He was right about their size. Some American examples became so large, in fact, that a postcard of the time featured a wearer staring sadly at a sign by a lift:

Ladies with Merry Widow Hats Take Freight Elevator.

Publishing details

Gallimaufry: A Hodgepodge of Our Vanishing Vocabulary is published by Oxford University Press. Hardcover: ISBN 0-19-861062-9, pp272; the publisher’s price in the UK is £12.99 and in the USA is $25.00. Paperback: ISBN 978-0-19-955102-6; now available worldwide; the publisher’s UK price is £8.99.

Quinion, Michael - OaI
Ologies and Isms
A Dictionary Of Word Beginnings And Endings

Ologies And Isms A Dictionary Of Word Beginnings And Endings (Oxford Paperback Reference)

by Michael Quinion

ISBN 13: 9780192801234

ISBN 10: 0192801236

Paperback; Oxford: Oxford University Press, USA, April 3, 2003; ISBN-13: 978-0192801234

Over 10,000 examples of word affixes to help you to decode word meanings.

This book covers topics such as Aquaculture, Haemophilia, Isochronous, Neuralgia, Polyunsaturated, and Rodenticide. How often do we see a technical word without quite knowing what it means? If we can decipher it - undo its language code - we can start to understand others of a similar kind. For example, if we know that words beginning with "aqua" are to do with "water", then we are half way to understanding the word "aquaculture". "Ologies and Isms" is about the building blocks of the English language - the beginnings and endings and sometimes the middles - that help form or adapt many of the words we use.

Whether you're a student or a practitioner, a teacher of English, an inveterate word-user, or just a seeker-out of linguistic trifles, the book should help you understand better the language of your workplace and the world around you. The text contains over 10,000 examples within 1250 entries and a selective thematic index breaks prefixes and suffixes down by theme, including biochemistry and drugs, living world, places and people.

We all have a childlike love of playing with words, adding bits, Lego-style, to create new ones. And we often wonder where words come from and how they are formed.

This book fills a gap we hardly knew existed. Ologies and Isms is about the building blocks of the English language—the beginnings and endings, sometimes the middles—that help create many of the words we use. How often do we see a common technical or medical word without quite knowing what it means? Does your blood run cold when you hear haemophilia; do you pale at paleobotany? If we can decipher such words, we can start to understand others of a similar kind.

Quinion, Michael - POSH
Port Out Starboard Home
Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds
Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins
Language Myths

One book, two titles. It’s called "Port Out Starboard Home" everywhere but in the US, where its title is "Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds".

It’s published in paperback by Penguin in the UK and by HarperCollins in the USA.
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Some experts call the creation of such stories about the origins of words popular etymology or folk etymology. A large part of this book retells such mythic tales and also tries to find and explain the true stories behind them. You might like to think of it as illustrations of the imaginative ways in which people work hard to make sense of the unknown.
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Publishing details

"Port Out Starboard Home: And Other Language Myths" is published outside the USA by Penguin Books. Hardcover: ISBN 0140515348, pp304; UK price £12.99. Paperback: ISBN 0141012234, pp282; UK price £7.99. In the USA it is published by the Smithsonian Institution Press under the title "Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds". Hardcover: ISBN 1588342190; pp280, US$19.95. The US paperback is published by HarperCollins; ISBN 0060851538, publisher’s list price $12.95.

Logophile Quinion, who writes a column about new words for the Daily Telegraph, proves his knowledge of familiar phrases in this energetic look at common English words and idioms. The first known use of the term "cut and dried", for example, occurred in 1710, in reference to an uninspired sermon; like herbs precut for sale in markets, the sermon lacked freshness. The notion of a "graveyard shift" did not arise from Victorian-era workers minding cemeteries to make sure people weren’t accidentally buried alive ("I love such stories, complete and utter hogwash though they are", notes the author), but dates from the early years of the 20th century, and is merely an evocative term for the night shift. From "Akimbo" (perhaps Old Norse in origin) to "Zzxjoanw" (an etymological hoax rather than a real word), Quinion tours the English language, not always offering definitive answers but generally providing the next best thing: good theories.

Words lovers, get ready to have some myths shattered. "Hot dog" didn't originate with a cartoonist who couldn't spell "frankfurter". Thomas Crapper - and he would probably be relieved to know this - did not give us the word "crap". The word "cop" is not an acronym for "constable on patrol". When he is not busting myths, the author (who runs the World Wide Words Web site) offers up origins of words and phrases most readers will probably have wondered about. We're all familiar with the phrase "happy as a... Lesen Sie mehr

What is the true origin of the phrase "one fell swoop"? Does the word "honeymoon" really derive from an old Persian custom of giving the happy couple mead, a honey wine, for the first month after the wedding? The rapid growth of the internet and the use of email has increased the circulation of (usually) false tales about the evolution of language. In this entertaining and fascinating new book on the origins of words and expressions, Michael Quinion retells the mythic tales that have become popular currency - the word "posh" deriving from "port out, starboard home" - and also tries to find and explain the true stories behind the origins of phrases. Quinion offers explanations of why and how stories about words are created, and how misunderstanding word origins - while usually harmless - can have serious consequences.

"The cat’s pajamas", "the bee’s knees", and "the whole nine yards" rolled into one, this true feast for word lovers skewers commonly accepted word-origin myths and etymological folk tales. Can it really be true that "golf" stands for "Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden"? Did the term "computer bug" really derive from an errant moth shorting out an early computer? Did the "kangaroo" really get its name through a misunderstanding between explorers and natives? Did "OK" really derive from the bad spelling of a US president?

The real story of the origin and evolution of a word or phrase is often much stranger than the commonly accepted one. The expressions that Michael Quinion reviews range throughout the English-speaking world, from "cater-cornered" to "dinkum" and from "wet one’s whistle" to "happy as a clam". From the bawdy to the sublime, explanations and delightful asides truly prove that the proof is in the pudding. If you ever wondered about why we utter such oddities as "raining cats and dogs", I could care less or twenty-three skidoo, this one’s for you. It’s a treasure trove of fiction and fact for anyone interested in language.

Can it really be true that "golf" stands for "Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden"? Or that "rule of thumb" comes from an archaic legal principle that a man may chastise his wife, but only with a rod no thicker than his thumb? These and hundreds of other stories are commonly told and retold whenever people meet. They grow up in part because expressions are often genuinely mysterious. Why, for example, are satisfying meals "square" rather than any other shape? And how did anyone ever come up with the idea that if you're competent at something you can "cut the mustard"? Michael Quinion here retells many of the more bizarre tales, and explains their real origins where they're known. This is a fascinating treasure-trove of fiction and fact for anyone interested in language.

ETYMOLOGICAL MYTHS.

The Telegraph has begun a series of excerpts from "Port Out, Starboard Home" by Michael Quinion, to be published by Penguin at £12.99 on July 1 (in the UK, obviously). The first begins with a good summary of various wrong ideas people get about where words come from and continues with a discussion of the marvelous phrase "all mouth and trousers"
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Word games

Michael Quinion intrigues Nicholas Lezard with his fascinating book of etymologies, Port Out, Starboard Home

Nicholas Lezard

The Guardian, Saturday 10 September 2005

Port Out, Starboard Home

by Michael Quinion

I am sorry, everyone, but I am going to have to murder a cherished belief. The word "crap" has nothing to do with Thomas Crapper, supposed inventor of the flush toilet. The OED cites a reference from 1846 to a "crapping ken", meaning a privy. Michael Quinion writes: "As Thomas Crapper wasn't born until 1836, didn't start his business until 1861, didn't invent the flush toilet, and didn't become well known until much later, it's clear his name had no influence on the development of the word crap."
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Quinion, Michael - QU
Why is Q Always Followed by U?

From the blurb

The cover of Michael Quinion's book 'Why is Q Always Followed by U?'

Quinion’s answers to questions about the meanings and histories behind the quirky phrases, slang and language that we all use are set to delight, amuse and enlighten even the most knowledgeable word-obsessive.

Did you know that ‘Blighty’ comes from an ancient Arabic word? Or that Liberace cried his way to the bank so many times people think he coined the phrase? That cloud nine started out as cloud seven in 30s America? And that the first person to have their thunder stolen was a dismal playwright from Drury Lane?

Why is Q Always Followed by U? is full of surprising discoveries, entertaining quotations and memorable information. There are plenty of colourful tales out there, but Michael Quinion will help you discover the truth that lies behind the cock-and-bull stories.

From the introduction

Over the past ten years, people from all around the world, not all of them by any means with English as a first language, have been asking me about the meaning and history of words in the Questions and Answers section of my online World Wide Words newsletter and Web site.

I’ve been able to answer about 900 of them so far. This book contains revised, corrected, expanded and updated versions of the most popular couple of hundred.

Out of an extraordinarily mixed bag of questions on slang, grammar, vocabulary, word histories and regional usage, I’ve chosen a selection that mainly refer to words and phrases that you’re likely to recognize, no matter which variety of English you’re comfortable with. However, I’ve also included some pieces about quirky phrases (such as up in Annie’s room, behind the clock) that may no longer be living expressions, or even be recognized by anybody who hasn’t been drawing their pensions for a while, but which I hope will intrigue you.

Etymology is an uncertain science and we often have to say ‘we don’t know’ to a question about word origins. But we are at a time of huge advances in the resources available to researchers. Searchable digital archives of newspapers and books have transformed the field in the past decade or so, with discoveries being reported almost every week. Not only did many of the entries in this book have to be updated following their first appearance in the World Wide Words newsletter as a result of new information, but several even had to be revised during its compilation because researchers had found fresh material that altered our understanding of the provenance of terms. New sources of information are being created all the time, with the British Library newspaper archive becoming available as this book began to be compiled and the announcement of a new wave of newspaper digitization by Google as it was completed.

There was a BBC radio series about archaeology many years ago called The Changing Past, a clever title that pointed up the impact of new findings on our understanding of prehistory. The point is just as relevant to etymology and it is a constant delight not only to investigate the stories behind words and phrases and put them within their social and cultural milieu, but also — as a person who has been intrigued with and fascinated by English since a child — to be able at times to provide fresh insight into the way the language has evolved.

Publishing details

[Michael Quinion, Why is Q Always Followed by U? Word-perfect Answers to the Most-asked Questions about Language, published by Penguin Books; hardback, 352pp; UK list price £12.99, ISBN: 978-1-846-14184-3. Paperback, also from Penguin, list price £9.99, ISBN: 978-0-141-03924-4.]