®® THE LANGUAGE QUARTERLY Vol. XXIX, No. 2 Summer 2004 Editor: Erin McKean Founding Editor: Laurence Urdang Alchemical Calques or the Transmutation of Language Rob Schleifer New York, New York I n the fifth century , Empedocles of Acragas, Philologically, this occurrence, by which Greek -- the Greek philosopher, proclaimed that the uni- pppeeemmmpppttteee ousia was translated, element by element, into VVVEEERRRBBBAAATTTIIIMMM verse was composed of four primal elements: fire, Latin quinta essentia, is known as a loan translation, or air, water, and earth. While not, perhaps, the most calque, a word derived from French cccaaalllqqquuueee ‘‘aann iimmiittaa-- discriminating descriptive cosmology, this doctrine tion or tracing,’ insofar as one language is transposing nevertheless dominated Western philosophical the elements of another language into its own ele- thought for twenty-one hundred years and is today ments. French calque, in turn, is fashioned from the still favorably regarded by born-again astrologists. French verb cccaaalllqqquuueeerrr ‘‘ttoo ttrraaccee oorr ccooppyy,,’’ wwhhiicchh iiss ddeerriivveedd But it did not completely satisfy Aristotle, who, from the Italian verb cccaaalllcccaaarrreee ‘‘ttoo ttrraaccee oorr ttrraammppllee,,’’ iittsseellff writing a century later, explained that while these an adoption of the Latin verb cccaaalllcccaaarrreee ‘‘ttoo ttrreeaadd oorr four material elements could define all earthly sub- trample,’ which, for our purposes, finds its source in stances, a fifth immaterial element must define all the Latin noun cccaaalllxxx ‘‘hheeeell,,’’ aass tthhaatt ppaarrtt ooff tthhee ffoooott tthhaatt -- heavenly phenomena. He called this element pppeeemmmpppttteee does the trampling. As such, calques may very well ousia, or ‘fifth being.’ be the philosopher’s stone of discourse, the elixir or Nearly two millennia later, the medieval phi- mother’s milk of living language, an archeology of losophers, busy transmuting lead into gold and knowledge, transmuting the violent trampling of discovering the elixir of life, sought to translate translation into the intercourse of loan. this expression into Latin. But classical Latin had Much can be discovered in this archeology. no present participle meaning ‘being.’ Fortunately, The ancient Romans, as well as the Greeks, have however, Cicero had remedied this problem in the provided English with a potpourri of picturesque first century , averting this medieval embarrass- calques. Even at the dawn of Roman civilization, ment by taking the existing Latin infinitive esse—an as a Tiberine she-wolf (Acca Larentia?) suckled almost exact counterpart to Greek einai, the infini- Romulus and Remus, some inhabitant of the Italic tive governing ousia—and extrapolating from it the peninsula may have gazed at the sky one night and hypothetical Latin present participial base essent-, to fancied that faintly luminous band of stars overarch- create the neologism essentia, which corresponds to ing the heavens to be a road or way of milk, or via Greek ousia. Then, some fifteen hundred years later, lactea, a phrase that was translated by Chaucer in the medieval philosophers prefaced this word with Middle English as mmmeeelllkkkyyy wwweeeyyyeee aanndd tthheennccee MMMiiilllkkkyyy WWWaaayyy,, Latin quinta, ‘fifth,’ an ordinal number equivalent eventually passing into Modern English, where it -- to Greek pppppeeeeemmmmmpppppttttteeeee,, establishing the Medieval Latin became a candy bar. Or instead, I would tender, the phrase quinta essentia; and these two words eventu- Romans may have partially translated their via lactea ally coalesced and passed into English as quintessence. from Eratosthenes’ kyklos galaxias ‘circle of milk,’ In this linguistic process the medieval philoso- from which we derive galaxy, now a generic term phers had unearthed, seem- for the Milky Way, though formerly our specific 42> ingly without knowing it, term; and kyklos galaxias may further be the source a means of transmuting of our obsolete English calque, lacteous circle, which the lead of a dead language would support this hypothesis. In any event, Latin into the gold elixir of liv- lllaaaccc iiss ccooggnnaattee wwiitthh GGrreeeekk gala and English milk, all 0 7447 0 05855 7 ing discourse. three words having descended from the common Page 2 V. XXIX, N.  VERBATIM Contents Vol. XXIX, No. 2 Summer 2004 Articles Alchemical Calques, or the Transmutation of Language Rob Schleifer p. 1 Bacronymic Etymythologies Douglas G. Wilson p. 5 Presidential Words Richard Lederer p. 8 I Didn’t Catch Your Name Robert M. Rennick p. 12 The Ethnocentricity of E-mail Simon Darragh p. 10 Lipograms: The Presence of Absence Susan Elkin p. 15 The Skinny on the Dictionary of One-Letter Words Craig Conley p. 17 HHHooolllyyy CCCrrraaapppooolllaaa!!! Mark Peters p. 19 Offending Words Gerald Eskenazi p. 21 Good Cop, Bad Cop Edmund Conti p. 29 Columns As the Word Turns: Y, O Y Barry Baldwin p. 24 Horribile Dictu Mat Coward p. 25 Classical Blather: Whatsinames and Thingamajigs Nick Humez p. 26 Ex Cathedra Erin McKean p. 31 plus the crossword puzzle and some and SICS! EPISTOLAE Contributions: will publish articles, anecdotes, squibs, letters, and other materials at the discretion of the Editor. 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In short, what began linguistically as an rub off,’ hence, ‘to milk,’ from which we acquire such accurate calque for a German concept transmogrified English derivatives as lactate, emulsion, and lettuce. into something quite alien, an example, if you will, But the Romans and Greeks are by no means our of semantic hypertrophy. sole legators of calques. In 1891, Friedrich Nietzsche But few calques have degenerated so bizarrely completed Also sprach Zarathustra, in which he elabo- in such a short a period. Religious calques, for rated upon his conception of the Übermensch, that example, have remained relatively stable over the rationally superior person who spurns conventional millennia, many of them deriving from the Hebrew Christian “herd morality” and transmutes himself, oorr AArraammaaiicc llaanngguuaaggeess,, tthhee ffoorrmmeerr tthhee llaanngguuaaggee ooff like a triumphant alchemist, to fully realize human the Old Testament, the latter the language spoken potential and creative mastery. Yet in a second- when Christ lived. ary transmutation, Nietzsche’s Übermensch, almost An enlightening religious calque is scapegoat. immediately upon publication of Zarathustra, was Though no longer commonly associated with any- misconceived as a man of extraordinary physical thing religious, it originally epitomized the atone- strength with a juggernaut-like “will to power” ment of Yom Kippur in which Aaron, the high priest over others. And in a tertiary transmutation, of the Jews, confessed the sins of his people upon the George Bernard Shaw, in popularizing and recast- head of a goat, which was then allowed to “escape” ing Nietzsche’s philosophy twelve years later, took into the wilderness, carrying away those sins. on the task of translating Übermensch into English. But the goat . . . shall be presented alive before But, evidently, he did not find the native rendering the LORD, to make an atonement with him, of overman or beyondman sufficiently mellifluous and aaannnddd ttoo lleett hhiimm ggoo ffoorr aa ssccaappeeggooaatt iinnttoo tthhee wwiill-- instead translated the first element ÜÜÜbbbeeerrr iinnttoo iittss LLaattiinn derness. (Leviticus 16:10, KJV) equivalent, creating for his new play and all posterity Scapegoat actually encompasses two calques and that immortal, hybrid calque . . . Superman! is an example of those words that I call doublecalques Faster than a speeding bullet! (with double pronounced dddooo——ooo’bl\, in the French man- ner). The biblical scholar William Tyndale, in pre- More powerful than a locomotive! paring his 1530 translation of the Pentateuch, coined Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! scapegoat as a calque of the Late Latin (Vulgate) caper Look! Up in the sky! emissarius ‘emissary goat,’ itself a calque of Hebrew It’s a bird! It’s a plane! -- - ‘‘‘aaazzzaaazeel, the name of a desert demon which, ety- IT’S ÜBERMENSCH! -- - - mologically, was understood as ‘‘‘eeez ozelll ‘‘ggooaatt tthhaatt Yes, it’s Übermensch, strange visitor from departs’—whence emissary goat, whence scapegoat, another philosophaster. Yet anyone who has had whence any person, place, or thing that bears the the pleasure of listening to that scholarly radio serial blame for others. of the 1940s featuring Bud Collyer, or of watching A more complex religious doublecalque is that intellectual television series of the ’50s starring Holy Ghost. This derives from Middle English holi George Reeves (not to be confused with his star- -- gost, which itself derives from Old English hhhaaalig crossed successor of the ’70s and ’80s, Christopher - gast—elements that can be traced, respectively, Reeve) could not help but note the discrepancy to Indo-European kailo- ‘whole, uninjured’ and between the relatively temperate pronouncements ggghhheeeiiisss---,, aann uunncceerrttaaiinn eelleemmeenntt eexxpprreessssiinngg aawwee oorr ffrriigghhtt.. of this commentator and the preternatural, quasi- However, in ancient Hebrew, a language classified omnipotent feats that this star character could (and within the Afro-Asiatic family of languages, ruah did) perform. Indeed, according to the original 1938 -- hhhaaa---qqqooodesh meant ‘holy spirit,’ which was later trans- “magazine” (as the television voice-over euphemisti- lated into Greek pneuma hagion and thence Latin cally deemed it), this Pimpernel incarnate could do spiritus sanctus. But not until the Roman missionaries little more than “hurdle skyscrapers . . . leap an eighth brought spiritus sanctus to the British Isles in the latter of a mile . . . raise tremendous weights . . . [and] run half of the first millennium did the English combine faster than a streamline train,” all of which brings -- - -- -- -- -- hhhaaalig with gast to form hhhaaallliiiggg gggaaast. Thus, while hhhaaallliiiggg gggaaast, him a lot closer to Nietzsche’s original, misconstrued morphologically, is of Indo-European composition, Page 4 V. XXIX, N.  VERBATIM semantically it is of Afro-Asiatic ancestry. Moreover, calques catachresticalques, after the Greek-derived rhe- -- -- since hhhaaallliiiggg gggaaast is a doublecalque of spiritus sanctus and torical term catachresis, as defined, in one of its senses, pneuma hagion, and spiritus sanctus is a doublecalque as ‘an incorrect use of a word, either from a misinter- -- of pneuma hagion and rrruuuaaahhh hhhaaa---qqqooodesh, I christen Holy pretation of its etymology or a folk etymology.’ GGGhhhooosssttt aa multiple doublecalque. (It has been suggested Scapegoat, as we have seen, is an example of a that HHHooolllyyy GGGhhhooosssttt bbee ddeessiiggnnaatteedd aa triplecalque; however, doublecalque, but it is also a catachresticalque inso- such a neologism would needlessly obfuscate the far as Late Latin caper emissarius, of which ssscccaaapppeeegggoooaaattt iiss terminology.) Tyndale’s English translation, is, in fact, a mistransla- -- - In contemplating multiple doublecalques, we tion of the Hebrew proper name ‘‘‘aaazzzaaazeel. And in a must not overlook parallel doublecalques. Groundhog, parallel historical development, Greek tragos apopom- -- -- Moreover, since hhhaaallliiiggg gggaaasssttt iiss aa ddoouubblleeccaallqquuee ooff spiritus sanctus and pneuma hagion, -- and spiritus sanctus is a doublecalque of pneuma hagion and rrruuuaaahhh hhhaaa---qqqooodesh, I christen HHHooolllyyy GGGhhhooosssttt aa multiple doublecalque. for example, is commonly asserted to be a calque of paios, ‘goat sent out,’ of the Septuagint is also a mis- Dutch aardvarken, which dissects into aaaaaarrrdddeee ‘‘ggrroouunndd,, iinntteerrpprreettaattiioonn ooff aanndd,, hheennccee,, aa ccaattaacchhrreessttiiccaallqquuee ooff -- - earth,’ and varken ‘hog, pig.’ But, significantly, a sec- ‘‘‘aaazzzaaazeel. So ssscccaaapppeeegggoooaaattt aanndd tragos apopompaios are clearly -- - ond calque representing an entirely different animal, parallel doublecatachresticalques of the Hebrew ‘‘‘aaazzzaaazeel. the South African anteater (Orycteropus afer), is also But multiple doublecatachresticalques have also translated from these same Dutch elements, though descended upon the English language. At about the in this context it is reconstructed from its alterna- time the Hebrews were completing the Torah, the -- tive English counterparts, earth and pppiiiggg.. SSoo groundhog Greeks were coining the phrase ooouuurrriiiooonnn oooooonnn ‘‘wwiinndd eegggg,,’’ and eeeaaarrrttthhh pppiiiggg aarree ppaarraalllleell ddoouubblleeccaallqquueess ooff DDuuttcchh to refer to certain eggs that do not hatch, presumedly aardvarken, which not incidentally yields, through its because they are conceived by the wind. Subsequently, seventeenth-century offspring language Afrikaans, this phrase was translated into Latin ovum urinum, the loan of our more learned term for the earth-pig with the same meaning. But somewhere along the anteater, aardvark. way Latin urinum ‘wind,’ became confused with Latin But few calques have the vainglory of being uuurrriiinnnaaaeee ‘‘uurriinnee..’’ SSoo wwhhaatt bbeeggaann,, iinn GGrreeeekk,, aass aa wwiinndd eegggg doublecalques. Indeed, a large number of what the was transmuted, in Latin, into a urine egg. Moreover, mmmooobbbiiillleee vvvuuulllggguuusss ccaallll ccaallqquueess aarree nnoott lleeggiittiimmaattee ccaallqquueess in Old English, the word for urine was adela, which and plead for a new name. Antinovel, for example, contracted in Middle English to adel; and the Old - is an incomplete translation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s English word for egg was ææægg,, which transmuted, in aaannntttiiirrrooommmaaannn ((tthhoouugghh tthhiiss tteerrmm wwaass uusseedd aatt lleeaasstt aass eeaarrllyy aass one of its Middle English incarnations, into eye. So 1627 by Charles Sorel) in which French rrrooommmaaannn iiss rreenn-- the compound aaadddeeelll---eeeyyyeee ‘‘uurriinnee eegggg’’ eemmeerrggeedd iinn MMiiddddllee dered by English novel, but in which the aaannntttiii rreemmaaiinnss English, of which the eeeyyyeee llaatteerr ddrrooppppeedd oouutt,, yyiieellddiinngg,, unchanged. X-ray, likewise, is a partial rendering of once again, a solitary Middle English adel. And this Wilhelm Roentgen’s X-strahl, in which German Strahl word passed into Modern English as addle. translates to English ray, but the X, being an inter- So the next time you call someone addlebrained national algebraic symbol for the unknown, remains or addlepated, smile to yourself, for you are saying intact. Such compounds, then, in which at least one more about that person than that person might major element is nnnooottt ttrraannssllaatteedd ffrroomm tthhee oorriiggiinnaall,, II suspect. And smile again, for you’re articulating an designate as demicalques. And certain of these words alchemical calque, that quintessence of loan—which and phrases, as tall oil, which is a demicalque of transmutes material as heavy as lead and as light as German Tallöl, which itself is a demicalque of Swedish the wind into the golden immaterial elixir of living tallolja, are, in fact, doubledemicalques. language. But a more captivating category of calques [Rob Schleifer is a Random House author. His last involves those words in which at least one major ele- article for “A Nocturnal View of the Lunar ment is mistranslated from the original. I call these LLaannddssccaappee”” aappppeeaarreedd iinn XXXXVVIIII//33.. ]] VERBATIM V. XXIX, N.  Page 5 VERBATIM Bacronymic Etymythologies abbreviated to form an acronym, an existing word is chosen first as the target acronym and a phrase is Douglas G. Wilson devised to match it. For example, the name “North Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Atlantic Treaty Organization” presumably dictated its “honest” acronym NATO. On the other hand, the awkward expression “Cooperative for American A neologistic title: but wait, I can explain. First, Relief Everywhere” presumably was contrived spe- what is an acronym? There are various definitions. cifically to justify the previously chosen bacronym According to the most restrictive one, an acronym is CARE. Not all bacronyms are as flagrant as this one a word that is spelled using the first letter of each of (although some are even worse); often in modern a series of words and that is pronounced as if it were times some “discreet” alteration of a proposed name an ordinary word (i.e., generally, not pronounced as is performed simply to facilitate the formation of a if spelled out). For example, NNNAAATTTOOO iiss aann aaccrroonnyymm ooff nifty acronym, and there are many borderline cases “North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” The full phrase in which it is not clear which was chosen first, the (in this case, “North Atlantic Treaty Organization”) acronym or its expanded form. (There is also an can be called the expansion of the acronym. This nar- apparent spelling variant, backronym.) rowly defined type can be called a letter acronym. Even In the investigation of word origins or etymolo- within this type there is some variation in that small gies, it is often suggested that a word originated as words such as and, of, or ttthhheee mmaayy bbee eeiitthheerr rreettaaiinneedd oorr an acronym. In modern times such an etymology is omitted when making the acronym: thus “National often genuine: for example jato, scuba, sonar, moped, Aeronautics and Space Administration” gives NASA and napalm are truly and transparently acronymic in (rather than NAASA), but “President of the United origin. Very likely snafu is genuine as well. It is inter- States” gives PPPOOOTTTUUUSSS ((nneevveerr PUS). Good practice esting to note, however, that the acronym is almost requires, I think, that the acronym be formed using entirely a recent phenomenon in English.1 Acronyms an internally consistent standard in this respect; one in English were relatively infrequent before World should keep all the small words or drop them all; War II and extremely rare before World War I. needless to say, this rule is not observed strictly in real The word acronym itself has existed only since about life. Initialisms that are spelled out in speech do not 1943: few acronyms were conventionally used much qualify as acronyms according to my usage: thus, for earlier. Initialisms such as O.K. are much older, and example, AAATTTMMM ffaaiillss ttoo qquuaalliiffyy ssiinnccee iitt iiss pprroonnoouunncceedd there was quite a craze for such abbreviations in the “A, T, M” rather than atom. I try to ignore such gro- U.S. in the late 1830s, but these were pronounced tesqueries as FNMA (pronounced Fannie Mae) for by spelling, and O.K. is still okay and not ock. It is “Federal National Mortgage Association” (perhaps I sometimes said that Seroco for “Sears, Roebuck and could call this an aggronym). Company” was the first genuine English-language Usually a less restrictive definition is employed, acronym, first used around 1900 or slightly earlier. permitting the first syllable or the first group of let- The true origin of a word can be acronymic; the ters of a component word to be used rather than only true origin cannot be fully bacronymic, however, the first letter when constructing an acronym: thus since a bacronym by definition precedes its expan- rrraaadddaaarrr ffrroomm ““rraaddiioo ddeetteeccttiinngg aanndd rraannggiinngg”” iiss ccoonnssiidd-- sion. A bacronymic etymology sometimes provides ered acronymic although it uses ra from radio, and one of several common types of “etymythology.” the Central Treaty Organization is permitted the The word etymythology refers to false etymology that acronym CENTO. A syllable acronym is one that has is associated with a myth or story “explaining” the no loose letters but only initial syllables: for exam- origin of a word or phrase.2 Ridiculous etymytholo- ple, “high fidelity” becomes hhhiii---fffiii aanndd ““mmoodduullaattoorr// ggiieess aarree vveerryy ccoommmmoonn.. IInn rreecceenntt yyeeaarrss,, aa nnuummbbeerr ooff demodulator” gives modem (liberties are taken with stories about word and phrase origins have circulated hyphenation, syllabification, and pronunciation in widely by email. Some are despicable and offensive many cases, including these). and undocumented; others are simply undocument- A bacronym is an acronym that is formed in a ed. It goes without saying that almost all are false. backward manner: instead of an existing phrase being For some reason, false etymologies of the acronymic Page 6 V. XXIX, N.  VERBATIM (bacronymic) type are particularly popular.3 Perhaps word meaning ‘half.’ The adjective in the modern they are popular because anyone who can spell (even sense dates from about 1918 with certainty, so the if completely ignorant of history, linguistics, etc.) acronymic origin is unlikely, verging on extremely can follow such a story. unlikely. The next thing to seek is the documenta- What is one to make, for example, of an asser- tion (for example, one of those tickets would be a tion that the venerable F-word itself is originally an good start); the major dictionaries haven’t found any acronym, based on “Fornication Under Consent supporting documentation, however, and neither of the King” or perhaps “For Unlawful Carnal have any of a number of interested scholars over the Knowledge”? Of course, usually some fable is pre- last several decades. sented to support the etymology. The initial assess- Among the few true acronyms developed ment of the claim is simple enough: if the word pre- before 1920 are Anzac, meaning “Australian and dates World War II, an acronymic origin is unlikely; New Zealand Army Corps,” and AWOL, meaning if it predates World War I, it’s extremely unlikely. ‘absent without leave.’ It is claimed that the abbre- Another clue: if two completely different acronymic viation AAAWWWOOOLLL eexxiisstteedd iinn iittss mmooddeerrnn sseennssee aass eeaarrllyy origins are put forth, it’s certain that one is bogus, as the American Civil War; this story doesn’t seem and it’s pretty likely that both are. Still, one ought to unbelievable, although I don’t know of any convinc- keep an open mind, and in this case I for one would ing evidence; however, it is highly doubtful that the be willing to inspect the old documents supporting acronymic pronunciation was used in the 1860s, the claim. What? There are none? What a surprise. since this type of pronunciation of an abbreviation Well, then, one might (provisionally at least) take was not natural then. The spelled-out pronunciation the word of a respected scholar as published in a “A, W, O, L”, sometimes still employed today, was refereed journal. What? No such paper can be cited? the expected pronunciation before acronyms became Imagine that. fashionable, and as late as 1929, as Mencken reports, Bacronymic etymythologies that are frequently “George Philip Krapp’s curious declaration that encountered and just as frequently debunked include a.w.o.l. was pronounced as one word, áwol, in the those associated with the words tip (meaning ‘[give a] Army” was derided in print.4 gratuity’) and posh. The word tip in the current sense Recent words, particularly those that did not seems to have developed from a sense like ‘light[ly] eexxiisstt bbeeffoorree WWoorrlldd WWaarr IIII,, aarree nnoott uunnccoommmmoonnllyy ooff tap,’ and it dates from the early eighteenth century acronymic origin. But there are also many spurious in this sense, making acronymic origin extremely acronymic etymologies presented for new words. In unlikely by the chronological argument. The fables some cases, it is not possible either to confirm or to suggest acronymic formation from such phrases as refute the acronym stories. I’ll present a few exam- “to insure prompt service” and “to improve per- ples that have come to my attention; when no firm formance.” Needless to say, documentation is not etymology is available, I’ll present my best guess. forthcoming. In the broad field of information processing or Supposedly “POSH” was printed on premium computer science, there are, of course, many true tickets for round-trip sea passages from Britain to acronyms, including amusing ones such as the well- India, denoting “Port Out[ward], Starboard Home.” established WWWYYYSSSIIIWWWYYYGGG ((pprroonnoouunncceedd ““wwiizzzzyy--wwiigg””)) Such a ticket supposedly would have entitled the ‘what you see is what you get.’ Often an “honest” holder to a compartment on the port side of the ship acronym will be followed by a series of bacronyms, during the trip to India and a starboard side accom- but usually there’s not much effort to disguise them. modation on the return voyage. The accompanying For example, MMMUUUDDD ((rreeffeerrrriinngg ttoo vviirrttuuaall--eennvviirroonn-- fable may include reasoning about the desirability of ment software) is said to be an acronym for “multi- such an arrangement, which might optimize venti- uusseerr dduunnggeeoonn”” oorr ““mmuullttii--uusseerr ddiimmeennssiioonn””;; oonnee ooff lation or minimize exposure to the tropical sun or these may be an honest expansion, but I don’t know provide a better view. The actual etymology of posh with certainty. Its descendents, however, are clearly is uncertain, but posh was nineteenth-century slang frivolous bacronyms, including MMMUUUCCCKKK ‘‘mmuullttii--uusseerr meaning ‘fop’ or ‘dandy’ and also ‘money,’ suppos- created kingdom’ and MMMUUUSSSHHH ‘‘mmuullttii--uusseerr sshhaarreedd eeddllyy ssppeecciiffiiccaallllyy ‘‘hhaallffppeennnnyy,,’’ ppoossssiibbllyy ffrroomm aa RRoommaannyy hallucination.’ The transitive verb mmmmmmuuuuuunnnnnngggggg ((((uuuunnnnrrrreeeellllaaaatttteeeedddd V. XXIX, N.  Page 7 VERBATIM to these), meaning to modify (usually for the worse) AAss aa ffiinnaall eexxaammppllee tthhaatt hhaadd aa bbrriieeff ppeerriioodd ooff or disable or destroy, was in my opinion probably notoriety in recent years, consider ccchhhaaaddd mmeeaann-- invented around 1960 based on the earlier slang noun ing ‘paper fragment,’ often denoting small pieces mmmuuunnnggg ((wwhhiicchh wwaass eeqquuiivvaalleenntt ttoo ‘‘ccrruudd’’)).. TThheerree iiss aa punched out of cards or paper tapes in various appli- claimed acronymic etymology based on “mash until cations (including the obsolete Hollerith card and no good,” which surely smells bad to me; of course the archaic paper ballot). The claimed acronymic the alternative recursive (self-referential) acronym origin of ccchhhaaaddd iiss ““ccaarrdd hhoollee aaggggrreeggaattee ddeebbrriiss..”” TThhee from “mung until no good” can only be a bacro- word ccchhhaaaddd sseeeemmss ttoo bbee rreellaatteedd ttoo ccoommppuutteerrss,, ssoo iitt’’ss nym. There are other recursive acronyms (generally presumably recent enough to have had a genuine obvious jokes), including the famous GGGNNNUUU ((wwhhiicchh iiss acronymic etymology. A little research, however, pronounced g’nu, with the GGG ssoouunndd iinnttaacctt,, lliikkee Gnu quickly reduces the plausibility of this etymology. in German), standing for “GNU’s not Unix!” As The earliest instances of this word ccchhhaaaddd ((aass ffaarr aass II an example of the rapidity with which patently false know) are several dating from between 1939 and acronyms appear, note the recent bacronymic analy- 1950. In all of these cases the word refers to debris sis of the word spam, meaning “unsolicited bulk that is not from a card but rather from a paper tape e-mail.” This term is only about a decade old, and used in telegraphy. Furthermore, the word was not its origin is well understood (from a Monty Python used for an aggregate; in fact, it usually appeared in skit in which the trade name Spam was employed). the plural form chads in these early citations. The Nonetheless, bacronyms such as “self-propelled bacronym presumably was promulgated after key- advertising message” have been put forth. punch cards had become more familiar than telegra- In the field of medicine there are of course phy tape, certainly not much before 1960, and after numerous true acronyms. There are also acronyms the word had been reinterpreted (likely through an in associated slang or informal jargon, and some of intermediary term such as chad box) as (optionally) these have false etymologies. For example, consider an uncountable noun referring to a mass of debris. the group of derogatory epithets for obnoxious or The true etymology is not firmly established; how- undesirable patients (or other persons). The best ever, I tentatively believe there is reason to equate known, gomer, is said to stand for “Get out of my this word with an older dialectal word, ccchhhaaaddd oorr chat, emergency room!” This etymology has a false ring which referred to various small items or fragments, to it, it is not supported by the early record, and I originally probably catkins (whence the form of the don’t believe in it, but the true etymology is not word) but extended to cover stones, twigs, etc.5 definitely established. I’m a little more certain about Some questions I cannot answer at all. Who toad; this is a conventional epithet meaning more or invents the etymythologies? And why? Do they less “repulsive [little] creature.” The purported acro- originate as serious speculations, or as deliberate nymic origin from “trashy old derelict” is inept in jokes, or in both ways? sense and also in construction since it doesn’t even The subject of acronymic etymologies is addressed provide the observed pronunciation, and it is surely at several sites on the Web.6 The topic of acronyms false in my opinion. Perhaps a better (although in general receives an amusing popular treatment in probably still false) acronymic etymology exists, a book by Don Hauptman, Acronymania.7 using something like “trashy old alcoholic derelict,” but I haven’t seen an assertion to this effect myself. Notes There are harsher epithets, which I will omit, and 1. The acronym tradition is considerably older in some other languages. Old acronyms based on Hebrew sometimes go by there are less harsh ones, such as the probably at least the name notaricon (or notarikon). Do “consonantal” alpha- partly genuine double acronym “LLLOOOLLL iinn NAD” for bets such as the Semitic ones lend themselves more readily “little old lady in no apparent distress” (sometimes to acronyms? Probably, since any set of letters (i.e., of con- “. . . acute distress”), where the NNNAAADDD iiss ppoossssiibbllyy aa sonants) in such a system is pronounceable, with routinely bacronym based on the probably genuine acronym interpolated vowel sounds. Tanach,, tthhee EEnngglliisshh rreennddiittiioonn ooff NAD, meaning “no acute/active disease,” which is the Hebrew word for the “Old Testament,” is apparently originally acronymic in Hebrew, based on Torah + Nebhi’im sometimes used in seriousness as a casual summary + Kethubhim ‘Pentateuch plus Prophets plus Hagiographa’ of a patient’s evaluation. Page 8 V. XXIX, N.  VERBATIM (kabbalists and others, please forgive my casual transcrip- Presidential Words tion and disregard for the diacritical marks). The fish as a Christian symbol is said to be from an acronym in Greek Richard Lederer (Jesus Christ Son of God Savior, written in Greek “Iesous San Diego, California Christos Theou Yios Soter,” giving the acronym ichthys, meaning ‘fish’); but some claim it’s a bacronym. There were early acronyms used as noms de plume in English—such as Perhaps the most useful expression of universal the famous bacronymic CCCaaabbbaaalll ((ccaa.. 11667700)),, aanndd tthhee ppeeccuulliiaarr communication ever devised, OK is recognizable and Smectymnuus (1641), which appears in the Oxford English pronounceable in almost every language on earth. DDDiiiccctttiiiooonnnaaarrryyy aanndd tthhee Encyclopaedia Britannica—but apparently OK iiss ssoo pprrootteeaann tthhaatt iitt ccaann ffuunnccttiioonn aass ffiivvee ppaarrttss ooff this was the limit for acronyms in English until recently . . . speech—noun: “I gave it my OK”; verb: “I’ll OK or is there a counterexample? it”; adjective: “He’s an OK guy”; adverb: “She sings 2. The fine word etymythology apparently was introduced OK”; and interjection: “OK, let’s party!” recently by Laurence Horn of Yale University in discussions under the aegis of the American Dialect Society. The explanations for the origin of OK have been 3. Fortunately for me, the most repulsive of the recent as imaginative as they have been various. But the late etymythologies (those that deal with the slave trade, with Allen Walker Read proved that OK did not derive lynchings, and with the Black Plague, for example) mostly from okeh, an affirmative reply in Choctaw; nor from are not of the bacronymic type, so I can avoid any further the name of chief Old Keokuk; nor from a fellow discussion of them except to note in passing that they too named Orrin Kendall, who manufactured a tasty are generally entirely bogus and without merit. brand of army biscuit for Union soldiers in the Civil 4. H.L. Mencken, The American Language: Supplement II, New York: Knopf, 1948, p. 379. War; nor from the Haitian port Aux Cayes, which 5. This chad as a variant of chat appears in the English Dialect produced superior rum; nor from open key, a tele- Dictionary, for example, but consider these excerpts from a large graph term; nor from the Greek olla kalla, ‘all good.’ American general dictionary, the CCCeeennntttuuurrryyy DDDiiiccctttiiiooonnnaaarrryyy ((11888899)):: Rather, as Professor Read pointed out in a series “““cchhaadd2 (chad), n. [E. dial. var. of chat4, q. v.] 1. A dry twig: of articles in American Speech, 1963–64, the truth is same as chat4. . . . [Prov. Eng. . . . , usually in plural.]” “““cchhaatt4 (chat), n. [A particular use of chat3, a catkin, or . . . .] more politically correct than any of these theories. 1. A twig; a little stick; a fragment.” He tracked down the first-known published appear- This ccchhhaaaddd iiss aann EEnngglliisshh pprroovviinncciiaalliissmm,, ooff ccoouurrssee,, bbuutt wwhhaatt ance of OK with its current meaning in the Boston jjjaaarrrgggooonnn wwwooouuulllddd bbbeee eeexxxpppeeecccttteeeddd tttooo bbbeee mmmooorrreee cccooosssmmmooopppooollliiitttaaannn ttthhhaaannn MMMooorrrnnniiinnnggg PPPooosssttt oonn MMaarrcchh 2233,, 11883399:: ““TThhee ‘‘CChhaaiirrmmaann that of telegraphy? The plural word chats meaning gravel of the Committee on Charity Lecture Bells’ is one or mine tailings is used in the United States; I believe it of the deputation, and perhaps if he should return is probably essentially the same word originally. The Scots to Boston, via Providence, he of the Journal, and word ccchhhaaaddd mmeeaanniinngg gggrrraaavvveeelll iiss lliikkeellyy cclloosseellyy rreellaatteedd.. his train-band, would have the ‘contribution box,’ 6. One good site is “Wilton’s Word and Phrase Origins,” (www.wordorigins.net) where there are discussions of the et ceteras, o.k.—all correct—and cause the corks to bacronyms gay, golf, cop, cabal, and caucus, for example. fly, like sparks, upward.” 7. Don Hauptman, Acronymania New York: Dell, 1993. Read demonstrated that OOOKKK ssttaarrtteedd lliiffee aass aann obscure joke and through a twist of fate went to tthhee ttoopp ooff tthhee cchhaarrttss oonn tthhee AAmmeerriiccaann hhiitt ppaarraaddee ooff words. In the 1830s, in New England, there was a From the Summer 2004 issue of Art & Antiques: craze for initialisms, in the manner of FYI, PDQ, “Art mogul Charles Saatchi considers the works aka, and TGIF, so popular today. The fad went so consumed in the East London Momart warehouse far as to generate letter combinations of intention- SfireI Cirre!pl aSceaIbCle in! tSheI hCisto!ry of British art. ‘Hell,’ ally comic misspellings: KG for ‘know go,’ KY for 2000, a 28-square-foot installation with hundreds ‘know yuse,’ NNNSSSMMMJJJ ffoorr ‘‘’’nnoouugghh ssaaiidd ’’mmoonngg jjeennttllee-- of toy Nazis, by Jake and Dinos Chapman, is one men,’ and OOORRR ffoorr ‘‘oollll rroonngg..’’ OOOKKK ffoorr ‘‘oollll kkoorrrreecctt’’ of many pieces that set the art world aflame. Now naturally followed. a glob of burnt plastic, Saatchi reportedly spent Of all those loopy initialisms and facetious $900,000 for the piece.” misspellings, OK aalloonnee ssuurrvviivveedd.. TThhaatt’’ss bbeeccaauussee ooff [Submitted by Julie May, Los Angeles, California, a presidential nickname that consolidated the let- who says “Poor Saatchi! I hope he can be restored.”] ters in the national memory. Martin Van Buren, V. XXIX, N.  Page 9 VERBATIM elected our eighth president in 1836, was born in tion eventually became the Ideal Toy Company. Kinderhook, New York, and, early in his political “They claim to have written to T. R. for per- career, was dubbed “Old Kinderhook.” Echoing mission and to have received a response from T. R., the “Oll Korrect” initialism, OK became the rally- saying, ‘I don’t know what my name may mean to ing cry of the Old Kinderhook Club, a Democratic the bear business but you’re welcome to use it,’’’ said organization supporting Van Buren during the 1840 John A. Gable, executive director of the Theodore campaign. Thus, the accident of Van Buren’s birth- Roosevelt Association. “Alas, the letter was lost.’’ place rescued OOOKKK ffrroomm tthhee dduussttbbiinn ooff hhiissttoorryy.. The bear was a prominent emblem in Roosevelt’s The coinage did Van Buren no good, and he was successful 1904 election campaign, and teddy’s bear defeated in his bid for reelection. But the word hon- was enshrined in dictionaries in 1907. Clifford oring his name today remains what H. L. Mencken Berryman could have made a million dollars had he identified as “the most shining and successful chosen to sell his idea to a toy manufacturer, but he Americanism ever invented.” refused, saying, “I have made thousands of children Stuffed bears were popular before Theodore happy; that is enough for me.” Roosevelt came along, but no one called them teddy bears, not until November, 1902, when the presi- dent went on a bear hunt in Smedes, Mississippi. Roosevelt was acting as adjudicator for a border dis- pute between the states of Louisiana and Mississippi. On November 14, during a break in the negotia- tions, he was invited by Southern friends to go bear readers with email access are hunting. Roosevelt felt that he could consolidate his probably already receiving several word-a-day supporters in the South by appearing among them emails, including Anu Garg’s (wordsmith.org), VERBATIM in the relaxed atmosphere of a hunting party, so he OPaulB MIcTFeEdriRes’s D(worIdsCpy.cTomA), and maybe even accepted the invitation. a weird word a day from ’’ss eeddiittoorr During the hunt, Roosevelt’s friends cornered a (http://www.oup-usa.org/mailman/listinfo/us-weirdand bear cub, and a guide roped it to a tree for the presi- wonderful-l). VVVEEERRRBBBAAATTTIIIMMM dent to shoot. But Roosevelt declined to shoot the However, if you still have room in your in-box, cub, believing such an act to be beneath his dignity Grant Barrett, the project editor for the Historical as a hunter and as a man: “If I shot that little fellow I Dictionary of American Slang, has started a new site for couldn’t be able to look my boys in the face again.” the words he comes across in his off-hours, “Double- That Sunday’s WWWaaassshhhiiinnngggtttooonnn PPPooosssttt ccaarrrriieedd aa ccaarrttoooonn,, Tongued Word Wrester,” at doubletongued.org, where drawn by Clifford Berryman, of President Theodore you can sign up for another daily email. Roosevelt. T. R. stood in hunting gear and with Recent emails have included the words Yuma ‘In rifle in hand with his back turned toward the cow- Cuba, a nickname for the United States,’ smitty ‘a ering cub. The caption read, “Drawing the line in type of automobile muffler known for its (powerful Mississippi,” referring both to the border dispute and or resonant) sound,’ noodle ‘to hunt bare-handed in to animal ethics. water for fish or turtles,’ sousveillance ‘‘tthhee wwaattcchhiinngg ooff Now the story switches to the wilds of Brooklyn the watchers by the watched; countersurveillance by and Morris and Rose Michtom (rhymes with vic- people not in positions of power or authority,’ zhing- tim), Russian immigrants who owned a candy store, zzzhhhooonnnggg ‘‘mmeerrcchhaannddiissee mmaaddee iinn AAssiiaa;; cchheeaappllyy mmaaddee,, where they sold handmade stuffed animals. Inspired inexpensive, or substandard goods,’ and murderabilia by Berryman’s cartoon, Rose Michtom made a toy ‘collectibles from, by, or about murders, murderers, bear and displayed it in the shop window. The bear or violent crimes. Also murderbilia.’ The emails pro- proved enormously popular with the public, and the vide links to the site, where full citations are given. Michtoms began turning out stuffed cubs labeled Well worth adding to your daily to-read list. Teddy’s Bear, in honor of our twenty-sixth president. —Erin McKean As the demand increased, the family hired extra seamstresses and rented a warehouse. Their opera- Page 10 V. XXIX, N.  VERBATIM The Ethnocentricity of Email vocative case.” The writer evidently neither knew nor cared that the vocative case was in regular daily Simon Darragh use throughout Greece, not to mention Cyprus, Greece Sydney, and Camden Town. No wonder Greeks are so touchy. But surely Greek is written with another alpha- HELO!!! bet? Yes, but you can’t conveniently tap out emails SOU EYXOMAI PERASTIKA GIA OTI in other alphabets. Even if you always send your EPATHES! H DIEYTHINSH MOU EINAI . . . . message as an attachment, you can’t be sure that the PERIMENO! BYE-BYE recipient will have a Greek font in his computer, or That, with the omission of a few personal even that the same keystrokes on one computer will details, is the text of an email I received recently. give the same letters on another. Until everyone uses Here’s another from the same person: Apple Macs as God intended, sending Greek from TI KANEIS RE SIMON? SYGNOMY POU one computer to another will continue to produce ARGEISA NA SOU APANTHSO ALA DEN Double Dutch. Because of these difficulties, I’ve ELENXO TA E-MAIL VERY OFTEN. HOW carefully avoided using any Greek letters at all in ARE YOU AND WHERE ARE YOU NOW? this article. What I really needed for my title was a I’M IN LIVERPOOL AND I’M STUDDING SAN word like Alphabetocentricity. TRELH!!!!!!!!! DISTIXOS DEN THA MPORESO To overcome the problem, Greek users of email NA ERTHO GIA THN DOULIA EXO TOSO have developed a phonetic transliteration into the POLY DIABASMA GIA TIS EXETASEIS roman alphabet, resembling that used in phrase META TA XRISTOUGENA KAI PREPEI NA books for English-speaking tourists, whose writers DOULEPSO FULL TIME STO ESTIATORIO!! are convinced, probably rightly, that English speak- BUT THANK YOU ANYWAY!!! ers would rather learn wildly incorrect pronuncia- PERIMENO NEA SOU SOON O.K? MANY tions than another alphabet. The two alphabets are, KISSES . . . . after all, very similar, especially in the upper case; And here, leaving out the name of the addressee, many Greeks, especially those less literary, like to is one of my replies: keep the caps lock key firmly depressed. The trouble Pos paei, . . . mou; opos uposxethika, sou exo is, very often the letters only look the same; they steilei ena gramma me to saliggari taxudromeio. don’t sound the same. Beta, gamma, and delta, for Agapi kai filia, Saïmon. instance, are pronounced not like our B, G, and So what’s the language? It seems to contain a few D, but like, respectively, our V, something like our English words, such as Helo (sic) and Bye-bye, or per- Y but with a slight closing of the throat, and like haps the writer is showing off her English. Church- our voiced TH. Indeed, the pronunciation as B, G, going readers may recognize AAAgggaaapppiii bbuutt eexxppeecctt aann e and DDD iiss aa ssttaappllee ooff GGrreeeekk ccaarrttoooonniissttss wwaannttiinngg ttoo rather than an i. My name is Simon; why the odd represent the barbaric (varvariko) speech of foreign- spelling Saïmon? ers. Since no single letters represent these sounds Well it’s Greek, but not as we know it. And I’d in Greek, they have to use the diphthongs mu pi, better say at once that by “Greek” I mean “the lan- gamma kappa, and ni tau. guage spoken by Greeks.” It’s necessary to state what How does all this work for a Greek writing an seems obvious because many people who ought to email? Vaguely, and not very well. Take the word know better think “Greek” means “a dead language DIEYTHINSH from the first example. It’s a trans- that used to be taught in some Northern European literation of the Greek word for ‘address,’ and it’s schools, and which bears a structural, but almost no pronounced ‘The eff sin thi,’ the first th being voiced phonetic, similarity to a language which was spoken and the second not. Thus the D represents a Greek two thousand years ago by a minority of the inhab- delta, the EEEYYY tthhee GGrreeeekk vvoowweell ddiiggrraapphh eeppssiilloonn uuppssii-- itants of what is now called Greece.” At about the lon (which is pronounced, in this case, ‘eff’), the TH time of these two e-mails I read in the Guardian that represents a Greek theta, and the final HHH rreepprreesseennttss aa something or other was “As outmoded as the Greek Greek ita, one of Greek’s many i sounds. In this last