My wife and I are watching The Crown and are greatly enjoying it, as well as learning quite a bit about British history (don’t worry, after each episode we check on the dramatic license the writers took). We’re now on the fourth season, which brings the advent of Margaret Thatcher as played with frightening accuracy by Gillian Anderson. (Point of Hattic interest: the accents of the English characters seem to be spot-on; those of the would-be Americans are awful — JFK, Jackie, LBJ, the astronauts, none of them are remotely believable.) And suddenly everyone was using the slang term “wet,” which I remembered from the ’80s but had no real sense of other than knowing it was a putdown. So I checked the OED:
15.b. Inept, ineffectual, effete; also as quasi-adv. and in combination wet fish, a wet individual, a ‘drip’. Also spec. in Politics (see quots. 1981, 1983). […]
1916 I’ll give yer a clip ‘longside the ear’ole if you ain’t careful. Don’t act so wet.
‘Taffrail’, Pincher Martin ii. 27
[…]1924 A man is wet if he isn’t a ‘regular guy’; he is wet if he isn’t ‘smooth’; he is wet if he has intellectual interests..; and he is wet..if he is utterly stupid.
P. Marks, Plastic Age 192
[…]1969 The Jesus of the Gospels can be a bit of a wet liberal at times.
K. Amis, Green Man iv. 180
[…]1980 The contrast between the splendid façade and the rather wet interior of the man [sc. Havelock Ellis], who was kind and gentle and distinguished, but also distressingly absent, indifferent and faint.
Times Literary Supplement 28 November 1355/21981 The term ‘Wet’ was originally used by Mrs Thatcher, who meant it in the old sense of ‘soppy’, as in ‘What do you mean the unions won’t like it, Jim? Don’t be so wet.’ It meant feeble, liable to take the easy option, lacking intellectual and political hardness. Like so many insults, it was gleefully adopted by its victims, and so came by its present meaning of liberal, leftish, anti-ideological.
Observer 26 July 12/31982 In considering the promotion of wet (or wettish) Ministers, she will tell herself that Pope was right.
Listener 23 December 6/31983 Britain’s Tory Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, began this vogue terminology by contemptously dismissing dewy-eyed dissenters from her arid Right-wing policies as ‘wet’.
Age (Melbourne) 5 October 13
(I thought “contemptously” in that last citation must be a typo, but it turns out the OED has it as a variant spelling, and a Google Books search finds lots of examples.) So we see that it is in fact associated with Thatcher, but I confess I still have only the vaguest idea of what it means. Oddly, Green has no examples of the Thatcher-adjacent use.
“Wet” is all too familiar in the UK as Thatcher’s term for traditional Conservatives who did not subscribe to her own neoliberal gospel.
In those innocent days there actually were Conservatives who thought that compassion might possibly be a central human virtue.
As with Reagan, the moral depravity of Thatcher has become clearer in retrospect than it actually was at the time, as their epigoni have obligingly worked through the consequences of their ideology for us. But it is now clear that it was always a cesspool. As Trump is the true heir of Reagan, so Farage is the true heir of Thatcher.
In the early writings (1953) of Sir Nigel Molesworth QC:
“You are uterly wet and a weed and could not lift wot the french call a concombre.”
wot @DE said. Wets and dries. The term was used with undisguised glee by the usual suspects: Private Eye, New Statesman, The Guardian.
I expect “wet” to make a comeback amongst the Tories, since their preposterous selection process has managed to evict even the slightly-damp-around-the-edges Cleverly (sic).
Cf. John Major’s “Bastards” and The Thick of It‘s “Nutters”.
As with Reagan, the moral depravity of Thatcher has become clearer in retrospect than it actually was at the time
Well, it was clear to me (and no doubt you) at the time, but I take your point. I can’t find it now, but I recently saw an essay saying we are in the 44th year of the Reagan presidency, and I’ve been thinking that for some time. Those fuckers really did us in.
As Trump is the true heir of Reagan, so Farage is the true heir of Thatcher.
Reagan and Thatcher were vile, yet they seemed to believe the garbage they spewed.
Trump is far worse. He says whatever he thinks will work to his personal benefit with no concern whatsoever for veracity.
Wet blanket was a common expression as I was growing up in middle Atlantic USA. And Duolingo teaches aguafiestas meaning party pooper.
…limited by his narcissism in that he isn’t capable of thinking that admitting a mistake could ever work to his personal benefit. Once he said there was going to be a press conference “at the Four Seasons”, his underlings were responsible for making it so, no matter that the hotel declined. Just a few weeks ago he said he still wanted the Central Park Five dead, decades after their, as he would put it about himself, TOTAL EXONERATION!.
I’ve encountered “don’t be a wet blanket”, but it seems to mean “don’t dampen our joy”, “don’t be a party-pooper”, not “don’t be weak when you ought to be ideologically rigid”.
Reagan and Thatcher were vile, yet they seemed to believe the garbage they spewed.
Trump is far worse.
I disagree. It doesn’t matter in the least whether they believed the garbage they spewed — the point is the damage they did. Assuming the Orange God-Emperor doesn’t get reelected (a big assumption, I know), the evil he did will fade far faster than the evil of Reagan, which became institutionalized.
Also, “wet blanket” has nothing to do with this use.
The OED cites all look to be UK-origin except the one from 1924, which is in a novel by an American writer with an American setting. But maybe in AmEng it was a bit of flapper-era slang that didn’t stick?
I think that’s right. If you click the “Green” link in the post you’ll see a bunch of entries under “3. in fig. senses. (a) (usu. upper-middle-/upper-class) weak, spineless,” and the US is there only in the 1920s.
In AmEng flapper-era slang, “wet” (particularly of politicians) meant “in favor of repealing Prohibition.”
19th-century American English had some truly glorious names for political/partisan factions. Barnburners! Locofocos! Mugwumps! Can BrEng of the same era offer anything like that perhaps not known to American readers? It is certainly a cultural accomplishment of some kind that the old party labels “Tory” and “Whig” supposedly both originated as pejorative exonyms, but that was a pre-19th-century accomplishment.
I find it surprising that no one has mentioned “you’re all wet”, which is familiar to me and not in a Brit context. Here’s a page from the Dictionary of Catch Phrases that gives it as an Americanism:
I don’t know whether he really said it, but in my head this is archetypally Rob Petrie saying it to Mel in the Dick Van Dyke show.
Stephanie Cole in Waiting for God: “He’s so daft he’ll do anything wet.”
I find it surprising that no one has mentioned “you’re all wet”, which is familiar to me and not in a Brit context.
That again is a different sense.
To me that mid-century American “all wet” means weak, foolish, wrong, which seems like the usage you’re talking about. As the Catch Phrase book has it, disparaging and sarcastic. The D. C. P. says it flowed right into the British usage that I think you’re talking about. “Our ruling politicians saw fit to borrow this childish epithet from the school children’s repertoire in the early 1980’s.”
Do I misunderstand the American phrase, or misunderstand how you’re defining Thatcherite wet?
DE –
you sound pretty loathsome to me. It must be a matter of bitter regret to you that Reagan and Thatcher brought down communism. Thatcher was trying to reverse the long-term decline of the UK economy, on which in the end everything depends.
And if it wasn’t for her, the UK would still be burning coal furiously.
you sound pretty loathsome to me.
Knock that shit off. You can disagree with a person’s ideas without insulting them, and that’s the way we do things around here. If DIE is loathsome, so am I — I despise those fascists at least as much as he does. And if you think Reagan and Thatcher brought down communism, you need to read some history. The long-suffering inhabitants of the Soviet Empire brought down communism, which had conspicuously failed, with a little assist from that foolish weathervane Gorbachev; Reagan and Thatcher merely looked on, clapped decorously, and claimed credit.
This blog is clearly becoming a far-left political organ (and quite anti-English), and I’m starting to feel out of place; and I wish it would stick to discussion of language.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were imperfect but in general on the side of freedom; and under Thatcher Britain’s economy and the lives of its people improved greatly. To call her morally depraved is a laughable inversion.
But come on – there are plenty of political blogs.
This blog is clearly becoming a far-left political organ (and quite anti-English), and I’m starting to feel out of place; and I wish it would stick to discussion of language.
Sorry! Politics only comes up occasionally, but when it does, I’m not going to hide my beliefs. Those are not in any way anti-English, however (most of the TV shows I watch are English, after all), and I hope you will enjoy the discussion of language and ignore the occasional outbursts of politics.
Just think of me as your crazy uncle who says enough amusing things to tolerate.
The trouble with political blogs is that they don’t have enough linguistics in them.
I must say that “most of the tv shows I watch are X” is much funnier than “some of my best friends are X” as a proffered defense to allegations of anti-X bias.
I was going to say “some of my best friends are English”, but I’m glad I didn’t now.
I don’t watch tv shows at all, and don’t get upset about X-bias or anti-X bias. There are plenty of laffs in just watching the behavior of people who watch tv shows and get upset. Of course I have my ideas and opinions, but I don’t throw hissy fits for their sake.
I must say that “most of the tv shows I watch are X” is much funnier than “some of my best friends are X” as a proffered defense to allegations of anti-X bias.
I thought of that even as I was typing!
The politics here is humanist, not leftist; anyways not wave-the-flag, friend-or-foe leftist. And it’s still mostly a linguistics blog (in other words, 95% of the abuse we heap on Chomsky is for his linguistics, and only 5% for his politics.)
That is for the same mysterious reason that linguists, literature lovers, and historians in general tend to be humanists. Plus, Soros pays us.
And, DE is not loathsome.
I am surprised by the accusation of anti-Englishness, but possibly I am anti-English myself and don’t notice.
(I don’t *think* so. I’ve been in England most of the day!)
All that Y says is true. (And I understand why the people who like Reagan do so, I simply don’t agree with them.)
And, DE is not loathsome.
DE is likesome ! A veritable bomb of aplomb in the race to mutual assured deterrence. As an American I can only wonder and emulate. Of course I do not assume that he is above throwing a can at a howling cat in heat outside his bedroom window. He would weigh the pros and cons before deciding what to do.
As a disciple of the saintly Nikolai Marr, I indignantly denounce the bourgeois running-dog capitalist error that linguistics can be separated from the Class Struggle.
Sal, ber, yon, rosh!
All deviations from this view are mere Stalinist reaction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism_and_Problems_of_Linguistics
They will never turn us from the true path, comrade Hatters!
It’s just an indignation across the nation
A chance for folks to greet
There’ll be groaning, denouncing and plenty of classes
Struggling in the street
As for the accusation of anti-Englishness, I think a better way of refuting it is to point out that I have nothing against any group of people defined by nationality — it revolts me that people are so eager to attack an entire country full of people much like themselves because the supreme leader of that country decides to invade another country. No, I despise the rulers of this world, not their hapless subjects. The English are fine, it’s the Gnomes of the City and the pols they buy that I can’t stand.
The sogenannte Gnomes of Zurich I’m familiar with, but hat’s complaint doesn’t seem directed at them … After you get rid of Dungeons-&-Dragons-adjacent usages, the key hit for the phrase “gnomes of the city” does indeed appear to be in a London context, in Melville’s perhaps-justifiably-obscure 1855 novel _Israel Potter_. But those gnomes are not shadowy power-brokers but instead seem like sympathetic down-and-outers similar to the hapless protagonist.
I despise the rulers of this world
Once upon a time there was a King who
was only 12 inches tall.
He was a terrible King but he made a
great ruler.
The sogenannte Gnomes of Zurich I’m familiar with, but hat’s complaint doesn’t seem directed at them
Sorry, I was playing on “Gnomes of Zurich” with reference to the City, whose resident moneymen basically get to do what they want without regard to law.
I just happened to come across the date: Sept. 10th – during the debate.
Also, having been to Poland even more recently, I’m contractually obliged to mention that the man who single-handedly ended communism wasn’t Reagan but John Paul II.
On the evils of the City, see Nicholas Shaxson, “The tax haven in the heart of Britain” (“over centuries, sovereigns and governments have sought City loans, and in exchange the City has extracted privileges and freedoms from rules and laws to which the rest of Britain must submit”) and George Monbiot, “The medieval, unaccountable Corporation of London is ripe for protest.” A quote from the latter:
I just happened to come across the date:
Your link yields a 404. You may have meant Sept. 10th.
Stu: Once upon a time there was a King who was only 12 inches tall. He was a terrible King but he made a great ruler.
He could draw a clear line, but always well measured.
Shaxson is a rare surname. My first thought is that it’s a variant of Saxon, but I see no justification for the different initial.
The origin of the name Shaxon:
I have no idea how seriously to take that, but it’s what I found.
I dunno. “-son” surnames are based on given names (John, Jack, Stephen, Nick, etc.), not on other surnames. The Irish theory would require even more phonological acrobatics, plus the unusual scenario of an Irish name surviving intact in England.
The surname seems to first pop up in Devon, in the 1600s, as Shaxon or Shaxson. Shackson appears later, and rarely.
Serendipity! Just a few days ago, I saw this in David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest:
I have consulted the Annotated Index to the Cantos of Ezra Pound, since the Cantos of course contain much fulmination against bankers in general and bankers of London in particular, but it has no entry for “gnome(s).”
i protest the slander on gnomes that associates them with bankers!
the true gnomic legacy is of the Gnomes of Wroclaw (the anarcho-surrealist ones who actually brought down the soviet bloc), who are often further demeaned by being called “dwarves”. if it’s got a pointy hat in red or orange, it’s a gnome! if it’s got an axe, pickax, or pulaski, it’s a dwarf! everything else is up for grabs, and might just be a domovoy or somesuch.
Indeed. There is no place for gnomism here.
@DE, I agree, it’s belittling.
There is no place for gnomism here.
What about aphorism?
In Greek, any true gnomic legacy would have to be recounted using the gnomic aorist, which guarantees its veracity. And yes, while gnomism is harsh, aphorism is just crossing the line…
What about aphorism?
In or out of aspic?
Reagan and Thatcher merely looked on, clapped decorously, and claimed credit.
I agree that Reagan did a lot of damage to the American polity, but he had a smart foreign policy team and he (or that team really) do deserve a lot of credit for collapsing the Soviet house of cards. The Reagan administration conspired with the Saudis to bring down global oil prices, recognizing that the whole Comecon trade bloc, as well as Soviet domestic consumption, was being propped up by oil export revenue. Add to that financing anti-Soviet Afghan rebels (who remember were right on the border of the USSR at the time), and an ambitious missile defense build up the Soviets couldn’t compete with. Reagan put the USSR under immense strain, and the country broke.
The unforeseen consequence of all that is that we Westerners would probably have been better off with a somewhat reformed USSR than what we have now (not saying that’s true for Ukrainians, Uzbeks, etc., just selfishly from a West European pov). Maybe that’s why our current policy makers seem to be bending over backward to keep Russia from collapsing again.
LanguageHat – with your characterization of Reagan and Thatcher as fascists we are in Leninspart country.
Ranting about the City of London Corporation is tilting at windmills: its role is very largely ceremonial, and is not responsible for legislation on taxation.
London is over-proportionally responsible for the tax income of the UK, and the city contributes much to that and to foreign currency receipts. That’s probably just as objectionable to Monbiot et al. as the ceremonial role: it all stands in the way of reducing us to uniformed comrades docilely swallowing their lefty trash.
LanguageHat – with your characterization of Reagan and Thatcher as fascists we are in Leninspart country.
Aw, come on — it’s just my standard over-the-top rhetoric. Anyone who has read this blog for more than five minutes is aware that understatement is not my forte. One reason I got out of academia was my rebellion against having to qualify every statement to death out of fear that it might be challenged. But if it makes you feel better, I despise Lenin far more than Reagan and Thatcher.
Graham said:
”This blog is clearly becoming a far-left political organ (and quite anti-English), and I’m starting to feel out of place; and I wish it would stick to discussion of language.”
You are not alone.
Language interacts with everything in culture. There is no realm of “pure” linguistics hygienically separate from “politics”, unless you adopt a crippled and inadequate Chomskyite view of “language” as something entirely apart from culture.
Your notion of “far left” suggests that we have some work ahead in pulling the Overton window back toward basic human values.
This site is remarkable for some of the most civilised discussions not only of politics but even of religion I have encountered. Lapses from basic courtesy towards other commenters (like that seen above) are exceptional.
As who should say: je n’ai pas eu le loisir de m’exprimer plus poliment. It’s all hurry, hurry, hurry nowadays.
David E. It’s not civilized. It’s smug. You have seem to have no idea how smug and patronizing the self-congratulatory dons of the Senior Common Room can come off as to those who don’t share their creaky and parochial worldview.
Now, hat of course is the proprietor here and we have all had experience (to use his own metaphor) of crazy uncles who bang on about their various obsessions and they are entitled to do so as long as they are good hosts.
You’re quite right. I have no idea.
What DE said. Come on, the vast majority of the threads here have nothing to do with politics — occasional outbursts of lefty ranting don’t make it a “political organ” any more than my occasional bursts of enthusiasm for the Mets or the Argentine national team make it a sports organ. I’m sorry if anyone is bothered — I have no desire to frighten the horses — but if you wait five minutes it will descend into the archives and we’ll be talking about Scandi-Congo again. My idea of basic human values includes deprecating both linguistic and politico-social elitism, and the two are (as DE points out) inextricably intertwined. But I welcome disagreement; we’ve even had civilized exchanges with hardened Chomskyites in these parts!
The political conversations are not what draws me here; for me pleasant, esoteric discussions are an escape from The Madness. But: I can easily avoid them at a glance. Plus, linguistics leaks into history, and history leaks into current history, a.k.a. politics. Plus, discussions here are civilized, and if people don’t know something they’ll acknowledge it, which keeps the adrenaline down.
I would offer hat sincere condolences re his Mets this October had they not cruelly deprived the Phillies of the valuable opportunity of losing to the Dodgers. (I have no idea how the Argentine national team is doing this year because I don’t really keep up on international rugby. Or is it polo that’s under discussion?)
As to “communism”, this blog has always and consistently lionized Enemies of the People — Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Mayakovsky, Nabokov, countless others — and is forever suspect of bourgeois disloyalty.
*holds out wrists to be cuffed*
a sports organ
i believe that hat exemplifies the proper use of the mighty wurlitzer as few others do in this day and age.
(and also that assertions from some cantabridgian quarters that athletics is the dedicated function of a distinct element of the brain and/or mind are simply the ravings of a yankee fan* manqué)
.
* that is, a [yankee fan] manqué, not a yankee [fan manqué]
Just as I will revile Reagan but be welcoming to those who approve of him, I can despise the Yankees while having no animus against Yankee fans (as long as they’re not the nasty, brutal kind). Mike Greene a/k/a thegrowlingwolf, whom I miss every day, was a diehard Yankee fan, but we discussed baseball without rancor (and he even accompanied me to Mets games on occasion). Can’t we all just get along?
a sports organ
Is there then no recursion in sport?
is a “sports organ” like the supposed human “language organ” addressed in this book? (Perhaps too close to Chomskyanism for comfort, but I was personally handed a copy by the author in a face-to-face setting so it would have been churlish to refuse it.) https://www.sranderson.net/publications/books/the-language-organ/
Possibly. Though it may be more akin to Lord Gnome’s.
Conceivably, these are simply two manifestations of the same phenomenon.
But in any event Yankees-Schmankees. I’m old enough to have been present for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Faust playing the organ at the old Comiskey Park before they tore it down.
I too enjoyed that pleasure, as well as that of relieving myself in the majestic marble trough provided for the purpose.
There is nothing more disappointing than descending into the nether regions of a fanciful bar, café or restaurant and finding stalls that have been jobbed up with the cheapest materials and labor available. A majestic marble trough is clearly something to bring happiness into your daily life; I just hope the ladies’ had something equivalent (if ladies even existed in the quondam world of baseball).
Good question. Comiskey was built in 1910 (it was the oldest park in the majors when it was demolished in 1991) and one has to wonder what the women’s accommodations were like. There’s a fairly detailed history here, but that particular element is elided.
Here’s a lively account of a boy’s experience with the pee trough (he was terrified); alas, no photo.
There’s an extensive discussion of both troughs and women’s facilities here (there’s a good account of the heroism of Denise Wells, who in 1990 fought a ticket for invading a men’s room and changed the world), but nothing about Comiskey.
@rozele: That gnome book is great – it has the right combination of fake-ethnological textbook and silliness. A friend had it in German translation and I would read in it when I visited him (as a child, I ‘d often visit a friend, grab one of their books, and retreat into a corner to read. This friend was OK with that habit and we’re still friends, for almost 50 years now.) I own the Polish translation, which I got as a present ca. 1990 from a Polish friend who had good taste in books and music.
such a wonderful book! the english-language edition i have (and was given as a kid) has a very distinctive smell; i can experience it very clearly in memory, and it’s been about a decade since i last opened my copy.
Gnomes is wonderful. I especially remember the one mention of Siberian gnomes, who, unlike the other gnome subspecies, can be quite nasty.
I hate to break into the chorus of enthusiasm–I also enjoyed Gnomes–but Brett’s comment reminds me that some have found disturbing racial tinges in the book.
some have found disturbing racial tinges in the book.
Well, good for them I guess. I wonder though – what are they going to do now if anything, after having their equanimity so rudely shook up ? Virtue signalling seems to be its own reward, but I don’t let that disturb me. I’ze got no virtue to signal (… wait, what am I doing by saying that …)
Well, by “disturbing” I didn’t mean “Oh my dear gracious goodness, this just won’t do atall atall” but “Ewg, would I want my kids to read this?” Racism/eurocentrism aside (are there East Asians in your neighborhood? There are in mine), Poortvliet’s trolls (and this is one of those books that started with the artwork) are obviously demonized babies, with their unaware cruelty and flying snot, and I wouldn’t, in fact, give Gnomes to a youngster with very small siblings. (More I won’t say, as it’s been years and I don’t own a copy of the book.)
“Ewg, would I want my kids to read this?”
If no – should they then join the book-banners ? And confiscate inappropriate books the kids bring home ? Move farther away from the big city ?
My father once said to me that all the books I read were making me rebellious. Actually it was the other way around. And it was he who had Peyton Place and Krafft-Ebing on his bookshelves, right beside The Strategy of Conflict and Szasz.
(are there East Asians in your neighborhood? There are in mine)
You mean the ones with the slanty eyes ? Sure. There are many more hairy Turks on steroids and loud Italians. Only two Americans apart from me, and they’re married to Germans. I hardly dare cross the street in broad daylight.
demonized babies, with their unaware cruelty and flying snot
Then there’s Chucky, a murderous puppet. If there’s to be book banning, a good place to start is with adult material.
I think what we have here is the clashing of two worldviews.
I suspect that more than two are involved.
In any case, I hope the ignorant armies clash by night, while I’m asleep. I can’t be bothered to take arms against a sea of other people’s troubles.
two worldviews
Three.
We need to consult the gnomes on this. We have no title to take up the cudgels on their behalf (or not, as you may think) without their opinions being known – and respected. Let the gnome community itself speak to the issues!
Cultural appropriation go home !
Gnomes is wonderful. I especially remember the one mention of Siberian gnomes, who, unlike the other gnome subspecies, can be quite nasty.
I think I remember the illustration for that being of a figure in a hazy blue and grey landscape, as if he were standing on the snowy tundra. Maybe it’s my imagination but I think the gnome had a set of glowing eyes, too?
Didn’t Tolkien also use “gnomes” in his early writings as a name for one of his groups of Elves, the ones who eventually became the Noldor?
IIRC Tolkien abandoned the word “Gnomes” for the Noldor shortly after the invention of the garden gnome.
@Pancho Here’s the image in question. I’m not sure if the eyes are supposed to be glowing, but they are definitely creepy.
Gartenzwerg “garden dwarf” in German… and they’re quietly assumed to be life-size. I was really shocked when I found out, only a few years ago, that Tolkien’s dwarves are taller than the hobbits. Like, what part of “dwarf” hadn’t he understood? I even thought “halfling” was supposed to convey “halfway between dwarves and men in size” in addition to “half a man’s size”.
@David M.: FWIW the book under discussion which was a huge sales success in the U.S. under the title _Gnomes_ was apparently titled in its German translation _Das große Buch der Heinzelmännchen_.* (Original untranslated Dutch title was _Leven en werken van de Kabouter_.)
*This looks to be the diminutive of Heinzelmann, which in a variant spelling (“Heintzelman” generally, at least after arrival in the U.S., although “Heinselman” according to the U.S. Census of 1870) was the surname of one of my Teutonic-immigrant ancestors.
I was really shocked when I found out, only a few years ago, that Tolkien’s dwarves are taller than the hobbits. Like, what part of “dwarf” hadn’t he understood?
I suspect Tolkien would have said, “Well, that’s the difference between dwarfs and DWARVES!” After all, he almost went full-on etymological and called them “dwarrows,” in an effort to avert the image of little dwarfs.
@Rodger C: He didn’t actually consider calling them “dwarrows” in writing The Hobbit. That was an after-the-fact argument for why he had used the plural “dwarves,” which some people had claimed was non-standard. In fact, the plural “dwarves” has always existed as a variant, and it had just come naturally to Tolkien when he was writing; neither he nor his editors noticed the supposed discrepancy. I suppose he could have changed the name to “dwarrows” in The Lord of the Rings, the way he replaced “goblin” with “orc,” but I’m sure he would have agreed that would have simply been too confusing for readers.
CINDERELLA’S PRINCE
It’s no sicker
Than your thing with dwarves.
RAPUNZEL’S PRINCE
Dwarfs.
CINDERELLA’S PRINCE
Dwarfs…
RAPUNZEL’S PRINCE
Dwarfs are very upsetting.
—
separately: the Orange Alternative’s gnome revolution was a kabouter revolution at heart, taking inspiration for both its surrealist political practice and its small fae avatars (and also possibly its color choice, though there’s also a plausible explanation that it’s a somewhat satirical blend of communist red and catholic yellow) from the dutch anarchist crew that preceded its activities by a few years.
…bringing us to this complex of multifarious etymologies. (The English article is quite a bit better than the German one.) Also, the possibly triune St. Phocas.
ooh! such fun! (i like the idea that the pointy hat might be a suspiciously erect sailor’s stocking-cap)
and i do blame the tolkein-gygax school of cryptid taxonomy for the idea that there are or should be clear boundaries among (say) dwarves, gnomes, kobolds, hobgoblins (the ones actually haunting europe, per helen macfarlane), elves, faeries, etc at a scale above the face-to-face local level. they’re parametric, not perimetric! as poor bron helstrom would say.
Indeed. Some of us are proud dwomes or hobolds. Hybrid vigour rules!
In Sarah Monette’s excellent The Goblin Emperor, goblins and elves are clearly all of the same biological species; goblins are basically black elves, and subject to pretty much the same kind of racism as black human beings chez nous. Though perhaps less virulent (it’s an optimistic novel.)
one of the striking things about the lovely (and less light than it seems at first) manga and anime Dungeon Meshi is that – at least in its english translations; i can’t speak to the japanese originals – it uses “people” as the category including tall-men [earth-type-humans], half-foots [halflings/hobbits, but short-lived], dwarves, elves, gnomes, kobolds [humanoid dogs], and orcs. the different types of person are described as “races”, with a clear implication that we’re to understand (and reject) bigotry against any of them through the lens of our world’s racism. (in the anime, skin/hair/eye colors and facial features vary within all the types of people we see more than one or two of, though orcs tend to be tinged green/blue/purple, and tall-men show the widest variation)
J. R. R. Tolkien, at least, believed intensely in the value of cultural exchange, including intermarriage between different groups. This was influenced by the opprobium he and Edith encountered for their Catholic-Anglican marriage. The origin of the orcs (which were the same as goblins) was something Tolkien never came to a satisfying explanation of, for metaphysical reasons related to the nature of free will, but Men, Hobbits, Elves, and Orcs were all unambiguously members of the same biological species. That kobolds should be conspecific with humans was actually a well-established idea in English fantasy. It is made clear in the prologue to The Princess and the Goblin (which C. S. Lewis particularly admired) that the goblins, in spite of the impression they might otherwise give, are biologically human. And all the fantasy races in The Worm Oroborous appear to be human variants, regardless of their racial names.
Tolkien’s dwarves were separately created, right? I’m not a scholar of the lore, but I don’t think I’ve seen anybody theorizing about their interfertility with the other peoples, though a lot of things happen in wartime that shouldn’t, and they are a warlike people. So an absence of dwarf-anything hybrids in the stories of Middle Earth could be taken as an argument per contra. I’m pretty sure there were half-dwarfs in some D&D-like systems WIWAL.
Has anybody heard from John Cowan?
I’m afraid not. I heard from someone in the Scheme community several weeks ago who asked if I knew anything, saying “I and some other friends of his have tried reaching him by email, by phone, and by physical letter, without luck.” I fear the worst. My one comfort is that there’s no update to his Wikipedia page.
I just heard back from the woman in the Scheme community:
She says she’ll call back later and report if she learns anything more. It’s good to know something of what happened, anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_of_the_Elves
Thanks, Hat. We miss him.
The dwarfs used to have a king named Alberich… at least in the Nibelungenlied.
Thanks, Hat. We miss him.
Yes, thanks! Not good news, but better than bad news.
Yes, hopefully he’ll show up here before too long, battered but unbowed.
I’m hoping for something more positive like kakiage: battered and deep-fried.
The pronunciation I hear in a youtube clip by (apparently) a Japanese man puzzles me slightly: the final “e” sounds like an after-thought. I can’t imitate it convincingly for myself. Is there a kind of glottal stop there ? I summon Morgenmantel.
Why is my last comment awaiting moderation ? A more moderate contribution has rarely passed my lips. Does Akismet now frown on fried shrimp ?
Rightly so. Fried shrimp are an Abomination. Naturally the all-wise and benificent Akismet will protect us from the very mention of such things, lest we be driven mad by the revelation!
Or possibly I’m frying them wrong. It’s not one of my core strengths, TBH. So many Abominations …
My comment, detained by the Moderation Police until just now, links to a recipe that can’t go wrong.
I have released it, and all is now revealed!
a recipe that can’t go wrong
Hah! A challenge!
Foolish and unwary recipe, you have met your match in Me!
This is what y’all should be cooking, none of this furrin stuff:
https://www.heb.com/recipe/recipe-item/texas-shrimp-po-boy/1398896899667
Das große Buch der Heinzelmännchen
Yes, I can confirm that. The Heinzelmännchen were mythical little people who, in the version of the story I know, lived in Cologne and during the night did other people’s work. They didn’t like to be watched, but one night some curious woman hid and watched them, was noticed and they vanished forever, since when people in Cologne had to do their work themselves, like everybody else.
I can’t find it now, but I recently saw an essay saying we are in the 44th year of the Reagan presidency, and I’ve been thinking that for some time.
I found it! Jonathan Lethem, “The Forty-Fourth Year of the Reagan Administration” (NYRB, November 7, 2024; archived).
Excellent article.
I’m continually startled by just how far to the right even the good(ish) guys have skewed in the US over these past decades.
Not so bad over here, though the phenomenon is still painfully evident.
(There’s a line in The Wire, where one character is talking about the young newly elected Democratic mayor: “they always disappoint.” For some reason, it’s been on my mind since our last general election here …)
The Wire taught me a lot about Baltimore, the US, and humanity at large. I think of it frequently.
I’m continually startled by just how far to the right even the good(ish) guys have skewed in the US over these past decades.
Median voter theorem. The mystical median voter doesn’t want a large scale redistribution. There was a lot of leftward movement on the social side though. If that mystical median voter gets their wish and at least the low skill immigration will be greatly curtailed, the clamor for redistribution will greatly increase. I don’t think it will be better than what we have now.
There was a lot of leftward movement on the social side though
Hearteningly, this is certainly true in the UK. Witness the fact that the front-runner for the leadership of the Conservative Party and darling of the palaeolithic Tory membership is a black woman with Yoruba parents who spent her childhood in Lagos.
Eat your heart out, Enoch Powell!
The bad guys have already lost on this one.
That notorious organ of the Third International, the Economist, had an article about this not long ago.
Can this be the first time that Jonathan Lethem is mentioned at LH?
His Gun, With Occasional Music is superb.
The Heinzelmännchen sound a bit like brownies, who could (can?) be offended in all kinds of ways.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownie_(folklore)
we are in the 44th year of the Reagan presidency
Yes, excellent piece. And yet … The constitution doesn’t give the President a free hand. Obama (after his first 2 years) was mostly blocked by congress. I see U.S. voters as chiefly pissed off by deadlock and confrontation in Washington. No wonder some think it’s democracy to blame — indeed I think the specific form of democracy in U.S. _is_ to blame.
Thatcher and Sons. Arguably Boris and Farage are grandsons.
Again, U.K.’s form of democracy is to blame: Thatcher never won the popular vote — even after the Malvinas ‘victory’, it’s merely that the opposition parties were in disarray and stepped on each others’ toes.
In NZ, following a similar Thatcher-like episode, voters threw out the form of democracy. Much better now. (The Farage-alikes are mostly kept in their boxes; the Trump-alikes lose their deposit.)
I try to be cautious in offering foreigners such as Britons advice on what their electoral system should be, but wikipedia informs me that the last time any single political party won an actual majority of the aggregate national vote across all constituencies in a UK general election was 1931. British (and more recently Canadian) practice seems a fairly overt challenge to the validity of what the poli sci types call Duverger’s Law or at least a strong version of that law. So the various victories of the Thatcher-led Tories w/o such a majority are neither more nor less legitimacy-challenged than the various victories of Labour as led by Atlee or Wilson or Blair etc.
Separately, while Lethem is more or less my own age (a year-and-a-few months older, and his wiki bio advises me that he briefly overlapped in college with my sister-in-law …) I am modestly fascinated by elderly Boomers like hat shaking their canes angrily at the grave of Reagan solely for the dog-that-didn’t-bark reason that they are not instead shaking their canes angrily at the grave of Nixon. Somehow the demon-figure of their earlyish middle age supplanted the demon-figure of their youth, and it would be of sociological interest to understand why.
The culturally ambient anti-Reaganism of my/Lethem’s late teens (when the man was indeed in office) is lovingly commemorated in this classic musical number: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijyOar85bmU
Again, U.K.’s form of democracy is to blame
Yes, I think you’re right. I’ve changed my own mind on this over the last few years (as have the majority of Labour Party members who didn’t already think that.)
Sadly, I don’t see much immediate prospect for change, given our recent ignis fatuus landslide victory (with a smaller vote than the supposedly electorally toxic Jeremy Corbyn …) A broken system. Though I think unbreaking it will need more than electoral reform. But it would be a start.
I am modestly fascinated by elderly Boomers like hat shaking their canes angrily at the grave of Reagan solely for the dog-that-didn’t-bark reason that they are not instead shaking their canes angrily at the grave of Nixon.
Oh, you’re quite wrong about that. I hate Nixon more than I hate Reagan, who was after all mainly a figurehead for the men who implemented the evil policies of his administration that remained in place for decades, whoever was in charge. Nixon was a genuine Shakespearean villain who tried to break our democracy.
His Gun, With Occasional Music is superb
Thanks for the recommendation! It looks well worth checking out.
A bit early for me, but: Nixon was a corrupt psycho, and was linked to the Vietnam war, but his main political objective was his own power. By 1976 he was disgraced, him and Ford were out, the war was over, and it was back to not ideal, but normal, as far as the left was concerned. Carter was no worse than Nixon’s predecessors. But Reagan was very clearly intent on breaking things, and he succeeded quite a bit in that. Many things he broke have stayed broken ever since.
It involves an era incrementally more remote than Nixon’s presidency, but anyone who is for whatever reason interested in the general topic of corrupt psychos linked to the Vietnam War should check out some books written by this Robert Caro fellow.
I personally carry no water for Nixon but honor the memory of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Ashbrook, who mounted a quixotic-yet-principled primary challenge to Nixon in ’72 on the grounds that Nixon was, as they say in the UK, too wet.
Obama (after his first 2 years) was mostly blocked by congress
it’s more that he (and biden after him) actively refused to use the expanded executive powers that his party had declined to contest when their senior coalition partners* enacted them.
.
* there is no opposition party in this country; the democrats’ approach to electoral strategy is utterly incomprehensible when seen through that lens. it becomes very clear and rational when you look at them as a party whose goal is a secure place as junior coalition partners, who very much prefer not to have the responsibility of governing.
Nixon was a corrupt psycho, and was linked to the Vietnam war
Undoubtedly true (though “psycho” only as a term of abuse rather than an actual diagnosis) but whereas Kennedy effectively began US involvement in Vietnam, Nixon ended it (for which the international war criminal Kissinger, in a sort of ne plus ultra of nihilist irony, got the Nobel Peace Prize.)
And the détente with China was a good thing.
And Nixon actually did do all those other wicked lefty woke things that the more-principled Ashbrook so rightly objected to. One shudders to think what Elon Musk would say.
So I agree with Y: Iran-Contra Reagan gets my vote.
The Citizens United decision, which officially legalised megascale corruption in the US, happened under Obama, although that only serves to underscore AntC’s point about the constraints on the actual power of US presidents.
Similarly with the current crew of Supreme Court political hacks, assiduously bringing their office into disrepute. Not Biden’s fault …
To be clear, I am not objectively ranking the villains myself: I am not enough of a historian for that. I am only trying to answer JWB and reason why the left, boomers and otherwise, has spent more time vilifying Reagan than Nixon. And likewise, why the right has been worshipping Reagan while Nixon was being forgotten.
I’m not much of a hisoriographer either, and I may be off.
In the interest of completeness and balance I should note that the 1972 election cycle also featured another, concurrent primary challenge to Nixon by another sitting Republican Congressman whose angle was that Nixon was not wet enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_McCloskey Perhaps the combination of this and the Ashbrook challenge enabled Nixon to position himself as the just-right Goldilocks candidate, neither too wet nor insufficiently wet. But this was also the year that the major rivals in the Democratic primaries to eventual nominee George McGovern included George Wallace, so the larger point is that both major U.S. parties were more ideologically-diverse coalitions than they subsequently became.
why the right has been worshipping Reagan while Nixon was being forgotten
This is not much of a conundrum. Nixon was if not a big government enthusiast at least ride-a-longer. Reagan was a proper neoliberal.
I am only trying to answer JWB and reason why the left, boomers and otherwise, has spent more time vilifying Reagan than Nixon. And likewise, why the right has been worshipping Reagan while Nixon was being forgotten.
I’m not a historian either, but I think one main reason for the left’s vilification may be that Nixon resigned in disgrace with both parties, so he doesn’t need to be vilified, while Reagan is liked by more than half of the country, according to one survey. Another may that Reagan and his team made the alliance between conservative people and conservative Christians that has worked so well since.
On the right, economic conservatives may be able to forgive Reagan’s budget deficits more easily than Nixon’s wage and price controls, and religious conservatives may see Reagan as almost one of them but Nixon (I bet) as an amoral lapsed Quaker.
i think all of that is true, and also (echoing D.O.) that a lot of nixon’s specific platform – which included universal basic income, if memory serves – became unpalatable to increasingly large parts of the right after reagan arrived.
the reagan revolution was one in some real ways, but mainly by being one within the u.s. right, taking it out of anything that could be called “conservative” (in the sense of preservationist) into a movement of social transformation (if not utopianism).
I think one main reason for the left’s vilification may be that Nixon resigned in disgrace with both parties, so he doesn’t need to be vilified, while Reagan is liked by more than half of the country, according to one survey.
Yes, exactly. I hate Nixon more, but I don’t need to say so because he has no constituency. It drives me absolutely bonkers that so many people, including soi-disant lefties, have fond memories of that nice old Grandpa Ronnie. Aargh!
*blasts “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg”*
Another may
be
that Reagan and his team made the alliance between conservative
business
people and conservative Christians that has worked so well since.
Posting too late at night, 5 yards.
This has deeply corrupted American evangelical Christianity in turn, by vastly increasing the influence of Prosperity Theology, which is about as fundamental a repudiation of the core beliefs of Christianity as can well be imagined. God makes the godly prosperous; ergo, the prosperous are godly. And the poor are cursed; at best, they are to blame for their own poverty.
“Conservative” Christians who espouse it are not conservative, but heretics. Though I suppose it is “conservative” in the sense of being a very old approach to the gods: “Hey, God! Look what I’ve done for you! Can I get some payback now?”
The stink is so grave that it may finish off white American evangelical Christianity. Good. Burn it down and start again.
Prosperity theology has made equal-if-not-greater inroads in recent decades among the less theologically-rigorous segments of black American evangelical Protestantism. Which is of course less highly correlated with voting Republican. Which means in turn that people who reflexively affix “white” to their complaints about the numerous defects of American evangelical Protestantism should generally be taken to have a political agenda rather than being motivated by concern for sound doctrine or practice. Indeed, I have read reports (although I do not know enough context to know how accurate they are) that the primary vector introducing prosperity-gospel teaching to the UK Protestant milieu is the Nigerian diaspora.
There was an internet rumor in 2016 that the aptly-named Rev. Creflo Dollar, one of the more high profile black pastors in the prosperity-gospel game,* had endorsed the candidacy of Trump, but the claim did not stand up to fact-checking. https://www.ajc.com/news/state–regional-govt–politics/claim-about-creflo-dollar-trump-endorsement-crashes-landing/TaJ5YcNGLY5TY9SOSRp5yO/
*You don’t have to be a scholar of comparative religion to be familiar with the ministry of Creflo Dollar – you just need have spent time in recent decades idly changing channels on American cable tv and occasionally pausing to see what’s going on on a channel you haven’t paid attention before.
Fair points all. I retract “white” and broaden the scope of my anathema accordingly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caedite_eos._Novit_enim_Dominus_qui_sunt_eius
as a predecessor with a zeal for orthodoxy almost at my own level is said to have remarked (though presumably in Occitan.)
Nigerian Christianity is indeed seriously mired in Prosperity Theology.
I think I have previously mentioned an occasion when I gave a sermon on the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, and discovered afterwards that one of the lucky recipients of my exegetic wisdom (a church elder) assumed that it was the Pharisee who went home justified. (The text can be interpreted that way, if you try …)
Prosperity Theology, in its Pentecostal guise, has also been making significant progress in Latin America over the last two decades, much to the distress of the Catholic Church. For whatever reason Europeans still seem fairly immune – our previous Bundeskanzler Sebastian Kurz tried to cozy up publicly to an American evangelical in 2019 and was pretty roundly mocked for it.
One confounding factor, I think, is that the “televangelism” model of ministry and its radio-based precursor (and maybe internet-based successors?) is particularly attractive to prosperity-gospel types, and because outsiders are more aware of those preachers than those you would only hear the substance of if you actually went inside a specific building on a Sunday morning it may be easy to misgauge/overestimate their importance. And on the one hand they may reach much larger audiences than any in-person preacher typically does, but on the other hand the in-person attendees are probably more highly motivated per capita than more casual tv/radio audiences to pay attention to what they hear and have it affect their lives.
The 1978 Rolling Stones song “Faraway Eyes,” played in a country-western style and sung by Jagger in his fake-American-hillbilly accent, famously begins:
I was driving home early Sunday morning through Bakersfield
Listening to gospel music on the colored radio station
And the preacher said,
“You know, you always have the Lord by your side.”
If you go on to the third verse it becomes pretty clear that this black radio preacher is offering a prosperity-gospel deal to his listeners, where the Lord will bless them with their worldly and material desires if they will only send ten dollars to the appropriate post office box so that their prayer for the desired blessing may be said on the radio the following week. To his credit, Mick (or rather the first-person-narrator character within the song) does not send in his ten dollars in order for the Lord to bestow upon him wealth or power, but seeks only the blessing of the affections of the girl with faraway eyes (to whom we had been introduced in the second verse).
The Epistle appointed this past Sunday (in the iteration of the Byzantine lectionary used in my parish) was 2 Cor. 9:6-11, which one must admit does suggest that the Lord has some interest in the prosperity of the faithful, although closely tied to the generosity of the faithful.
God loves a cheerful giver!
Who doesn’t?
(Cheerful giver’s bank manager, I suppose. And Ayn Rand.)
A giver induces feelings of obligation in the receiver. That leads to resentment. The giver can be as cheerful as she likes, it only delays the resentment by a little.
One way to avoid this slosh of feelings is to simply take the money and run. The bank manager then tightens the giver’s line of credit. Calm is restored, everybody wins.
Cheerfulness is the devil’s workshop.
Abt natural!
Further to Stu’s point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giri_(Japanese)
OK
Among those who don’t love a cheerful giver are:
Bank managers
Ayn Rand
Stu Clayton
The entire population of Japan
….
Prosperity theology has made equal-if-not-greater inroads in recent decades among the less theologically-rigorous segments of black American evangelical Protestantism.
Yeah. And amongst the Maori/Pacifica segments in New Zealand. The leader (self-styled ‘Bishop’) of this sect finds it appropriate to flaunt
histhe wealth he’s extracted from his flock with a collection of top-end vehicles. He was a prominent organiser of NZ’s January 6-alike siege of Parliament protesting the Covid lock-down. (MAGA merchandise was prominent.)Last week’s Economist had an article about Nigerian pentecostal Christians in the UK. It even quotes a bit of Yoruba.
I got another report on JC from Daphne (the woman in the Scheme community):
I’ll be glad to provide the phone number to anyone who wants to call him — I just didn’t think it was a good idea to put it in the comment text.
Thank you very much for the update, hat. I hope his full ability to function smoothly on the internet is restored shortly via appropriate hardware. His whole persona seemed such a blend of functioning-on-the-internet AND committed-to-the-physical-reality-of-living-in-Manhattan that getting at least half of that back seems very important to mitigate the loss of the other half.
It sure does.
Thanks for the update! And I hope we’ll see him here again soon.
A great relief, and especially when my own efforts fizzled out fruitless. Thank you, and thanks to Daphne and Mark and all others involved!
I just called John, never having spoken with him before. He was in very good spirits. Unaccustomed as I am to extending sympathy, I immediately put my foot in it by saying: “Amazing, I thought you had a New York accent, but you sound like a regular guy!” To which he replied sarcastically: “I beg your pardon?” Later we talked a little about physiotherapy and chiropractors (a bowl of hot porridge around which I am currently pacing).
Just got an e-mail from John; he says:
I told him we would all be very glad to have him back.
All this keyboard and font business here is so fin-de-siècle. Does WordPress support voice comments ? I hear that nobody in the States sends text messages anymore, but instead audio/video clips. Nobody who’s everybody, that is.
Beats me — I’m a text guy. John would know…
I originally smirked at hearing that nobody sends text messages anymore. But when John and I exchanged commiseration about our respective Wurstfinger being much bigger than those smartphone keys, it occurred to me that voice clips are a good idea. As an enhancement to text, natch. As a crutch is an enhancement to a broken leg.
Of course IPA fans will find themselves out in the cold. Who needs IPA when you’ve got the real sounds ?
You can drink a good IPA even if you use voice messages.
thanks so much for the news!
Yes indeed.