Archives for February 2004

I know legal terminology tends to the arcane, but this is ridiculous. Apparently in the heading of affidavits there is a line that simply says “ss” between the names of state and county, thus:

STATE OF ARIZONA )
)ss.
COUNTY OF MARICOPA )

And nobody knows what it means. There are, of course, several theories. One is that it means “subsections”; this seems to me shot down by the fact that there are no subsection numbers next to it. Another is that it means scilicet ‘namely’; aside from the fact that the normal abbreviation is sc, ‘namely’ makes no sense here. The explanation that Margaret Marks, from whom I take this item, tentatively prefers (and I’m glad to hear it, because I, a legal ignoramus, like it too) is

what Bryan Garner says in Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage: that it was entered once in error and then copied again and again over the centuries. Garner… says it comes from a flourish in the Year Books (unofficial law reports from 1282 to 1537).

The law is not only a ass, it is a sloppy and forgetful ass.

A new comment on an old post says:

I have run across the occupation “pail turner” I can’t find this on any lists of obsolete occupations so I’m hoping you might either know the answer or have an idea where I might look.

Sure enough, if you google the phrase you get a number of old census records resembling “Newcomb Lewis 23 M Pail Turner NH” and lists of occupations like “151 Packer 2. 152 Pail turner 1. 153 Paint store 2,” but no explanation of what a pail turner does (or rather did). Anybody know?

Anyone who’s ever tried to sell their writing should visit this educational thread at Making Light. Teresa, who has had to wade through many a slush pile, provides a “rough breakdown of manuscript characteristics” (from “1. Author is functionally illiterate” to “14. Buy this book”); wry agreement, humor, outrage, and all manner of psychodrama ensue (including at least one disemvowelled comment). Warning: Teresa’s initial post is very long, and there are (at this moment) 362 comments, so allow yourself some time.

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Valerie Bloom’s poem “Language Barrier” begins:

Jamaica language sweet yuh know bwoy,
An yuh know mi nebba notice i’,
Till tarra day one foreign frien’
Come spen some time wid mi.

An dem im call mi attention to
Some tings im sey soun’ queer,
Like de way wi always sey ‘koo yah’
When we really mean ‘look here’.

and continues with marvelous examples of Jamaican idiom (“A ready yuh ready aready?”), finishing up with an expansion of the linguistic dissonance felt by “po’ likkle foreign Hugh”:

Mi advise im no fe fret imself,
For de Spaniards do it to,
For when dem mean fe sey ‘jackass’,
Dem always say ‘burro’.

De French, Italian, Greek an Dutch,
Dem all guilty o’ de crime
None a dem no chat im language,
Soh Hugh betta larn fe mime.

But sayin’ dis and dat yuh know,
Some o’ wi cyan eben undastan one anodda,
Eben doah wi all lib yah
An chat de same patois.

(If you need a crash course in patois, there’s a word list here.) The poem is just one element in the syllabus for the Caribbean Literature course (Winter 2002) of the Department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara; they obviously have to have good course materials to keep students focused on anything but the gorgeous surroundings of the beachfront campus. (Via wood s lot.)

A useful table of plurals, collective nouns, sounds, and names for females, males, and offspring (I add the necessary caveat that many alleged collective nouns for animals are more fanciful than real); a second page lists animal adjectives (anserine : goose) and tosses in a few herpetological riddles and jokes. Via wood s lot (via morfablog).

Dan of Swanno sends me a link to a heartfelt description of the agonies of trying to learn how to pronounce Tibetan while looking at the apparently sensible writing system. For a more orderly description of said system, try the Learn Tibetan page, and you can hear Tibetan read aloud here.

I hope all of you are familiar with the amazing linkhound plep, who routinely ferrets out informative and/or gorgeous stuff from around the world. If not, go there at once; if you know him already, go there anyway, because he’s entirely revamped his site, with a clean new layout and striking flower-shaped insignia, courtesy of taz, whose design skills are eminently clear from the Languagehat banner above this post. Bravissimi tutti i due.

A comment by the proprietor of BARISTA in a previous post brought to my mind this wonderful passage from Pound’s Canto 80:

” forloyn ” said Mr Bridges (Robert)
” we’ll get ’em all back ”
meaning archaic words and there had been a fine old fellow
named Furnivall and Dr Weir Mitchell collected

Robert Bridges was a poet who became laureate in 1913; Pound said: “Anecdote: years ago when I was just trying to find and use modern speech, old Bridges carefully went through Personae and Exultations and commended every archaism (to my horror), exclaiming ‘We’ll git em all back; we’ll git em all back’.” Frederick Furnivall was instrumental in the creation of the OED and one of the dramatis personae of The Meaning of Everything (a Christmas present I am very much looking forward to reading); S. Weir Mitchell was a Philadelphia neurologist and writer (known especially for his historical novels, perhaps the reason he appears here); and forloyn (normatively spelled forloin) is an old hunting term meaning ‘To leave (the pack) far behind’ or (as a noun) ‘The action of forloining’ (according to—what else?—the OED): “When a Hound meeteth a Chase, and goeth away with it far before the rest, then say, he Foreloyneth.” Alas, despite Bridges’ antiquarian hopes, “the Cantos is very likely the one modern work in which the word forloyn can be found” (Kenner, The Pound Era, 94).

Weir Mitchell was quite a character; this medical-eponym site has an extensive biography and bibliography (and even quotes a couple of his poems), and includes this striking passage:

Weir Mitchell was a legendary character whose portraits show him as a handsome man. His rather gaunt features and bearded face make one readily understand why he was likened by many people at the time to «Uncle Sam». He was a superb conversationalist and his personality and humour gave him a wide range of friends. He actively promoted young people who he thought were outstanding, most notably John Shaw Billings (1838-1913) and Hydeio Noguchi (1876-1928).

Mitchell was famous for his sometimes eccentric approach to patients with functional illnesses. He was asked to see a patient who was thought to be dying, and soon sent all the attendants and assistants from the room, emerging a little later. Asked whether she had any chance of recovery, he said «Yes she will be coming out in a few minutes, I have set her sheets on fire. A clear-cut case of hysteria!»

Another story is that he was confronted with a lady who had a similar problem and having tried all the tricks he knew to induce her to leave her bed, threatened her with rape and commenced to undress. He got to his undergarments when the woman fled the room screaming! These stories may have grown with the years since in many ways he was rather prim, and Freud’s writing shocked him. He is said to have thrown a book on psychoanalysis into his fire, exclaiming, «Where did this filthy thing come from?»

Courtesy of the ever-jocular Des, sole proprietor of the multifaceted webpublication Desbladet (“på nätet sedan 2001”):

What’s that, Tezza?
      Homo sum; nihil humanum a me alienum puto.
      I am human, and I for one welcome our new alien overlords.
      Terentius (“Terence”)

(I for one am inordinately fond of the British nickname formation employed here, exemplified most notoriously by Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne, “the Geordie comedian and occasional footballer.”)

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A sentence in today’s NY Times story about the Massachusetts Supreme Court caught my eye: “Several legal experts said all seven justices were highly qualified, and that Justice Sosman and Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall, in particular, were known for their sharp and probative intelligence.” How do people feel about this use of probative (where I would use probing)? Merriam-Webster’s gives as a first definition “serving to test or try: exploratory,” and I presume they take this from the OED’s “Having the quality or function of testing; serving or designed for trial or probation; probationary. Now rare.” But the OED’s last citation is from a couple of centuries ago, and I’ve never seen the word used in any other way than Webster’s second definition (chronologically, not in order of frequency of use): “serving to prove: substantiating.” This is the only meaning given, for instance, in Cassell’s, which does not bother with obsolete uses. So: is the Times wrong, or simply behind the times?