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I’d never really thought about the oddness of the term deed poll, ‘British: a deed (as to change one’s name) made and executed by only one party,’ until a Wordorigins contributor brought it up. Dave Wilton‘s answer provides one of those surprising and enjoyable bits of linguistic history that got me interested in linguistics in the first place:

Poll originally meant head, and is commonly used in reference to the counting of heads. It’s either from or cognate with the Dutch pol meaning top or summit.

In the case of deed poll, it comes from the verb meaning to shave (the head). Since this type of change to a deed affects only one party—unlike a transfer of ownership—the document edges would be cut straight. For two-party documents, the cut would be jagged so the two halves could be matched. Deed poll dates to the 16th century and is contrasted with deed indented.

So deed poll has the same structure as battle royal or linguist manqué. Who knew?

Anatoly (whose Russian LJ has long been a favorite of mine) has recently begun an English-language blog, Lovest Well (named for the one bit of Pound’s Cantos that just about everybody likes, the end of Canto LXXXI); a few days ago [Thursday, September 14th, 2006] he linked to Eric Korn’s TLS review of the new edition of The Chambers Dictionary and highlighted the following delightful passage:

Chambers never forgets its origins, and Scotticisms are pleasingly many: […] and “snigger”, which last is to do with catching salmon with a weighted hook, apparently an illegality, which caused me once the wildest of surmises, when a newspaper (the Kirkintilloch Bugle, if I’m not mistaken) ran the headline MAN FINED FOR SNIGGERING AT LOCH NESS: I thought it was my first real case of political correctness run mad.

This Scottish sniggering, by the way, is a variant of standard English sniggling; there does not appear to be a Kirkintilloch Bugle (though there is a Kirkintilloch Herald), and if this is some sort of obscure Scottish joke I wish somebody would explain it to me.

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A correspondent asked: “Why is it that there is an ‘oldfangled’ and a ‘newfangled’, but no ‘fangled’?” I did a little research and responded:

Excellent question! Newfangled was originally newfangle, which goes back to the thirteenth century and is based on the archaic verb fang, meaning ‘grasp, seize; take, receive.’ (The original form is still occasionally used: 1993 Vancouver Sun (Nexis) 12 June D14 “Updating ‘Helena’ to a 1925 setting—new signs, fewer horses, more of those newfangle automobiles.”) It originally meant ‘fond of novelty or new things; keen to take up new fashions or ideas; easily carried away by whatever is new’ but came to simply mean ‘Newly or recently invented or existent, novel; gratuitously or objectionably modern or different from what one is used to.’ Oldfangled is much later (first citation: 1797 in Catal. Prints: Polit. & Personal Satires (Brit. Mus.) VII. 354 “We’ll stitch up these old fangled Garments for our beloved brats”) and is simply a play on newfangled.
There is actually a verb (and noun) fangle, though not often used (e.g. 1755 CARTE Hist. Eng. IV. 136 “Such was their zeal for a new religion of their own fangling”); the OED says they “arose from a mistaken analysis of NEWFANGLED, later form of newfangle ‘eager for novelty’. As newfangled was said both of persons and of their actions or productions, it came to be diversely interpreted to mean either ‘characterized by new fashions or crotchets’ or ‘newly fashioned or fabricated’.”

I thought that was interesting enough to share with the assembled multitudes.

Conrad of Varieties of Unreligious Experience has outdone himself with a tripartite History of the Nod (Part I, Part II, Part III) that begins with the story of Cain and Abel and God’s stern judgment on the fratricidal former:

ki ta’avod et-ha’adamah lo-tosef tet-kocha lach na vanad tihyeh va’arets
‘When you work the ground, it will no longer give you of its strength. You will live as fugitive and wanderer on the earth.’ The underlined syllable, nad, denotes wandering. Strong’s Hebrew Bible dictionary gives the following list of senses for the basic root: ‘to nod, i.e. waver; figuratively, to wander, flee, disappear; also (from shaking the head in sympathy), to console, deplore, or (from tossing the head in scorn) taunt:—bemoan, flee, get, mourn, make to move, take pity, remove, shake, skip for joy, be sorry, vagabond, way, wandering.’ The word is echoed again in 4:16:
vayetse kayin milifney yahweh vayeshev be’erets-nod kid’mat-eden
‘Kayin went out from the presence of the Lord, from the east of Eden, and dwelt as a wanderer on the earth’. Here nod is a cognate of nad. (See here for a recent post on the topic by the young Jewish scholar, Simon Holloway.) Jerome (405 AD) renders 4:16 as ‘Egressusque Cain a facie Domini, habitavit profugus in terra ad orientalem plagam Eden.’ The 1370s Vulgate translation supervised by the heretic John Wycliffe offers ‘And Caym, passid out fro the face of the Lord, dwellide fer fugitif in the erthe, at the eest plage of Eden.’ Likewise, the standard Vulgate in English, translated as Catholic propaganda by Gregory Martin in 1609 and now known as the Douai-Rheims Bible, reads ‘And Cain went forth from the face of our Lord, and dwelt as a fugitiue on the earth at the east side of Eden.’
But a different tradition had arisen even before Jerome…

He goes on to explain how “a wanderer on the earth” became “the land of Nod” and the subsequent attempts to derive that factitious name from the English word; in Part II he goes into the history of the English word, the puns made possible by the homophony, and the Eugene Field poem that begins, irresistibly,

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe,—

and in Part III he discusses the anthropological and cultural significance of the gesture of nodding (“Since ancient times, the nod has been more than simply yes—it has been a powerful political instrument”). It’s all done with his patented mix of scholarship and wit, and he throws in some gorgeous illustrations for free. Go have a look.

I’m reading In War’s Dark Shadow by W. Bruce Lincoln (having been prompted by my Unread books post), and a particular usage is bothering me. Here’s an example: “Among Russian writers and publicists, ignorance about the lives lived by such men and women bred contempt…” Elsewhere he quotes a “French publicist.” Now, to me, this is a completely un-English usage (to me a publicist is exclusively a press agent or other PR type); I’m familiar with it from Russian публицист [publitsist] ‘commentator on current affairs,’ but I always regarded its use in English as a flagrant example of translationese (like “echelon“). Now that I check the OED, I find that it is in fact good English:

2. loosely. A writer on current public topics; a journalist who makes political matters his speciality.
1833 Westm. Rev. Jan. 195 We hear of editors, reporters, writers in newspapers, and sometimes ‘publicists’, a neological term; but the world.. does not assign the definite meanings to these terms. 1863 S. EDWARDS Polish Captivity I. 78 Certain German publicists point with an air of triumph to the fact that Prussia has constructed a railroad from Posen to Breslau. 1874 GREEN Short Hist. x. §2. 752 The hacks of Grub Street were superseded by publicists of a high moral temper and literary excellence.

But the last citation is from 1874, so it’s possible the sense is obsolete. Is it? Or have I simply missed it in my wide reading? As always, I await the multifarious verdict of my Varied Readers.
Incidentally, my apologies if you were unable to comment yesterday (as at least one reader who sent me an e-mail was); the site was having problems, which have since been corrected. (That’s also why there was no post for yesterday.) Thanks much to the good folks at Insider Hosting for their response to my anguished outcry!)

So I was scrolling through the latest OED update, looking up (as is my wont) any words that strike me, and one of them was Pokot. It rang a faint bell, and when I saw “A member of an East African Nilotic people inhabiting parts of western Kenya and eastern central Uganda” I remembered that I had seen the name in language books (sometimes spelled Pökoot). But the etymology (origin unknown, in case you were wondering) included the line “The former name SUK n. and adj. is considered to be derogatory.” So of course I looked up Suk (“a. An East African people who inhabit an area on the Uganda-Kenya border; a member of this people. b. The Nilotic language spoken by the Suk”) and found no etymology at all; I presume they’ll add one, along with a “derogatory” note, when they get around to the su– words in a few years. At any rate, I plan to add this to my arsenal of examples of “correct” and “bad” ethnic names that people cannot reasonably be expected to be aware of (Oromo/Galla being another); I like to bring them up when people get too smug and snippy about correcting other people’s usage (“Surely you’re aware that the people you’re calling X prefer to be called Y, you hegemonic imperialist pig”). I’m all for spreading the word about such things, but it should be done in an ‘umble and kindly manner, with full awareness that one is likely an unwitting sinner oneself.

(Incidentally, the stress in Pokot is on the second syllable: puh-KOHT.)

Update (Dec. 2024). They revised their Suk entry just this year; the definition now reads:

1. An East African Nilotic people inhabiting parts of western Kenya and eastern Uganda; a member of this group; = Pokot n. A.1.

The self-designation Pokot is now preferred in this sense, Suk and its derivatives being regarded by many of the members of this people as derogatory terms reflecting colonial attitudes.
[…]

2. The Southern Nilotic language of this people, belonging to the dialect cluster of Kalenjin within the East Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan family; = Pokot n. A.2.

The term Pokot is now preferred (see the note at sense B.1).

And the etymology reads:

Probably < the stem of Masai osúkí (nominative plural isûk) the Pokot people.
Notes
The self-designation of the people is Pokot Pokot (also written Pökot, Pökoot: see Pokot n.).

The “Probably” seems excessively cautious, unless they mean that it might be from a term in another language related to Masai osúkí; it’s hardly likely to be coincidence.

Margaret at Transblawg says in her latest post:

Frau Kohlehydrat has sent me a meme, or as the Germans call it ein Stöckchen, or as the Austrians including Frau Kohlehydrat call it, ein Steckerl: to list the ten books that are gathering dust on my shelves because I bought them but haven’t read them.

I don’t usually do these, but this one seems highly suitable as I have even more than ten unread books. And for years, when I was teaching, I used to buy all sorts of books just to imagine how nice it would be to have time to read them.

She lists her ten books, then says: “I am now supposed to pass this Steckerl on… If they wish then, to: languagehat (but I’m sure Steve has read all his books)…”

Ah ha ha ha ha! I am closing in on 5,000 books (though to be fair the list includes a couple of hundred maps and some other non-book items), and I’m quite sure I haven’t read anywhere near half of them. I long ago came to terms with the fact that I’ll never manage to read all my books, but I love having them anyway, and I never know which one I’ll suddenly decided I have to read. Anyway, I like the idea of listing a few, so below the fold are ten books that I’m really glad I own and I will definitely get around to reading… really!

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The karatekatrix in question is broadcastrix Lynne Russell, and the accent in question is American, as in “ostentatiously from the U.S. rather than Canada.” That’s a spin we don’t often see here in Americacentricland, and Torontonian Joe Clark of fawny.blog has an entertaining post about it, “Lynne Russell Dialect Watch.” He says of Canada “We put people on TV who speak in accents. Yes, of course everybody has an accent, but I mean detectable accents,” and goes on to dissect Russell’s:

♦ Most disturbing is Russell’s mispronunciation of the title of an elected head of a province (and some territories), premier. It’s pronounced exactly one way, “preemyer,” a lesson only some recent U.S. ambassadors to Canada have bothered to learn. It is not pronounced in the various hodgepodges Americans use for that word and the related premiere (“premeer,” “premyare”). Russell pronounces it “primyeer” [ˌprɪmˈjiːr] or “premeer”
♦ Back vowels (chiefly [aː] → [ɑː]), sort of like a Buffalonian…

He finishes up with a striking slip Russell came out with even as he was writing the post: “How’s it gonna play with the American – ‘with the American.’ How’s it gonna play with the Canadian public?”
And now I know how to say “premier.” Thanks, Joe!

Boasts time mocks cumber Rome. Wren
set up his own monument.
Others watch fells dwindle, think
the sun’s fires sink.

Stones indeed sift to sand, oak
blends with saints’ bones.
Yet for a little longer here
stone and oak shelter

silence while we ask nothing
but silence. Look how clouds dance
under the wind’s wing, and leaves
delight in transience.

    —Basil Bunting, 1975

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I hate to trespass on the New Yorker‘s territory, but I can’t resist passing along the headline to this story [by Steven Wine for the Associated Press] from the Berkshire Eagle:

Few saw rookie weave mound gem

(In case the story gets taken offline or that fastsearch link doesn’t work, the story is about a young Florida Marlins pitcher who threw a no-hitter—the first in the major leagues for two and a half years—before a few thousand people, Florida having pretty much given up on their underachieving team. Oh, and for those who don’t know from baseball: “mound” refers to the pitcher’s mound, the slight elevation from which the pitcher throws the ball to the batter, sixty feet and six inches away. As to how you’re supposed to weave a gem, you’re on your own with that. Ask the headline writer.)