languagehat.com

Here’s an appropriate follow-up to my last post, which involved a less blatant (in fact, barely noticeable except to copy editors) overlooked typo; this one is more, um, in-your-face. Law.com has the following tale of an invasion of sea sponges:

Spell-checking on his computer is never going to be the same for Santa Cruz solo practitioner Arthur Dudley.
In an opening brief to San Francisco’s 1st District Court of Appeal, a search-and-replace command by Dudley inexplicably inserted the words “sea sponge” instead of the legal term “sua sponte,” which is Latin for “on its own motion.”
“Spell check did not have sua sponte in it,” said Dudley, who, not noticing the error, shipped the brief to court.
That left the justices reading — and probably laughing at — such classic statements as: “An appropriate instruction limiting the judge’s criminal liability in such a prosecution must be given sea sponge explaining that certain acts or omissions by themselves are not sufficient to support a conviction.”
And: “It is well settled that a trial court must instruct sea sponge on any defense, including a mistake of fact defense.”…
Dudley corrected the error in his reply brief, telling the court that a “glitch” caused the weird wording and instructing that “where the phrase ‘sea sponge’ is found, this court should insert the phrase ‘sua sponte.'”
The faux pas has made Dudley the butt of some mild ribbing around Santa Cruz. Local attorneys, he said, have started calling his unique defense the “sea sponge duty to instruct.”

Thanks go to Nick for the link.

From America’s Finest News Source, a story of a good man driven to desperate measures:

Copy Editor’s Revenge Takes Form Of Unhyphenated Word
February 27, 2006 | Issue 42•09

BOSTON—Bruce Huntoon, a copy editor at Pilot magazine, intentionally did not correct the copy of columnist Justin Mann Monday. “I am tired of that insufferable asshole’s mean-spirited jokes,” Huntoon said. “So, when he described the carburetor warmer as a ‘twentieth century’ invention, I decided to leave the copy untouched and let him deal with the consequences of his actions. The fucker.” Huntoon said the unhyphenated compound modifier is the most extreme step he has ever taken, adding that he drafted a resignation notice that he will hand in should his superiors notice the omission.

I must confess that I have been similarly tempted myself, but the high dignity of my calling and the oath we editors are required to take before being issued the red pencil and green eyeshade (“I will allow no error to pass without correction…”) have so far restrained me. (Thanks for the link, Songdog, and I hope the coming week is better than the one you’ve just been through!)

Did you know that’s the original form of control? I didn’t (or more precisely, I probably did at some point and later forgot). OED:

perh. a. F. contrôle, earlier contrerolle ‘the copie of a roll (of account, etc.), a paralell of the same qualitie and content with th’ originall; also, a controlling or ouerseeing’ (Cotgr.), corresp. to med.L. contrarotulus, f. contra against, counter (cf. CONTRA- 3) + rotulus ROLL. But, as the n. appears only about 1600 in Eng., and app. not in the original literal sense, but only as a noun of action, it was probably then formed immediately from the verb. A few examples of COUNTER-ROLL (q.v.) directly represent the Fr.

Johnson (copied in later Dicts.) has as first sense, but without quotation, ‘A register or account kept by another officer, that each may be examined by the other’. This J. retained from Bailey’s folio, where it was founded on the statement in Kersey’s Phillips, 1706, ‘properly, a Book, or Register, in which a Roll is kept of other Registers’. But this is merely an etymological remark, applicable to med.L. contrarotulus, and OF. contrerolle; there is no evidence that control was ever so used in Eng.: see COUNTER-ROLL.

Neat, huh?

By the way, I’m off to Cape Cod for a brief but much-needed vacation; I’ll be back Saturday evening.

Update (April 2020). The OED revisited the word for the Third Edition in December 2015; they now say the noun is apparently from the verb, adding:

Compare Anglo-Norman contreroulle, countrerolle, Anglo-Norman and Middle French contreroule, Middle French contrerole, contrerolle, French contrôle duplicate copy of a roll or other document, kept for purposes of cross-checking (end of the 13th cent. in Anglo-Norman, 1367 in continental French, although earlier currency is probably implied by contreroouller control v. and contrerolleur controller n.), verification (1419 as contreule), direction, management, surveillance (1580), originally < contre against (see counter prep.) + role, roole, roulle, etc. roll n.1, in later use (in senses relating to verification, checking, or direction) < contrôler control v.

Compare also post-classical Latin contrarotulus counter-roll, record kept by one official as a check on another (frequently from 1220 in British sources) < classical Latin contrā against, counter (see contra- prefix) + rotulus roll n.1

Compare counter-roll n., a calque on the French word, and earlier controller n.
Johnson (copied in later dictionaries) gives as first sense, but without exemplification by a quotation, ‘A register or account kept by another officer, that each may be examined by the other’. Johnson retained this sense from Bailey’s folio, where it was founded on the gloss in the 1706 edition of Phillips’s New World of Words, ‘properly, a Book, or Register, in which a Roll is kept of other Registers’. However, this is merely an etymological comment on the Latin and French nouns; there is no evidence that control was ever used in this sense in English (compare counter-roll n.).

About the verb they say the following:

Etymology: < Anglo-Norman counterouller, Anglo-Norman and Middle French contreroller, Middle French controler (French contrôler) to check or verify (an account, originally by comparison with a duplicate register) (c1310 in Anglo-Norman), to oversee, regulate (payments, expenses) (late 14th cent. or earlier), to check, verify (a fact, statement, etc.) (1437), apparently < contrerole, contrerolle, contreroulle control n. (although this is first attested slightly later than the verb).

Compare post-classical Latin contrarotulare to check by means of a counter-roll (frequently from late 13th cent. in British sources), Old Occitan contrarolar.

Compare earlier controller n.
Senses 3 [To exercise power or authority over; to determine the behaviour or action of, to direct or command; to regulate or govern] and 4 [To restrain from action, hold in check; (in later use) esp. to curb the growth or spread of] are not paralleled in French until considerably later and do not appear to have become established in French until the late 19th cent. (although there is an isolated attestation in the 17th cent.); they may have been borrowed into French from English.

Oxford University Press has a blog that deals with all sorts of subjects, and they’ve just added a language column by etymologist Anatoly Liberman: “His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears here each Wednesday.” His first post, Etymology and the Outside World, discusses the decline in prestige of historical linguistics with the rise of structuralism in the early 20th century and celebrates the fact that the lay public has never lost interest:

Fortunately, the general public had no notion of what went on in the halls of Academia and retained its interest in word origins, an interest that is inborn in us. People have been asking where words came from since the beginning of recorded time. Etymology is rarely taught on our campuses, but the shelves of even small libraries are well stocked with books on “the loom of language” and “the romance of words.” Healthy instincts are ineradicable and pay no attention to fads and fashions. As an active etymologist I receive queries from all over the world. Even when predictable, they are thought provoking. Many people want to know the origin of their family names. They usually have an idea of what they will hear from me, but a second opinion never hurts. Another never-ceasing source of curiosity is the origin of slang. But there are many other things to ask about. Where did ain’t come from? What accounts for the odd spelling of women? Is the popular origin of posh right? Sometimes I know the answer or know where to find it, sometimes I have to concede defeat: “Origin unknown.” Knowledge, once it frees itself from charlatans’ grip, has its limits. What counts is not whether I am able to satisfy every correspondent, but that the fount feeding their letters never dries up. As long as it bubbles, etymology will remain in good shape.

Worth keeping an eye on, and I hope he keeps allowing comments, which are what bring a blog to life.

A lively NY Times story by Marlise Simons, “Keeping a Moroccan Tradition Alive, One Tale at a Time,” describes the ancient Arab storytelling tradition still hanging on in Jemaa el Fna, the main square of Marrakesh. (Its name is said to mean ‘assembly of the dead’ but it strikes me as deeply suspicious that there’s an Arabic word finā’ ‘courtyard; open space in front of or at either side of a house’; perhaps Lameen can enlighten us.) Simons says:

Mr. Jabiri, 71, is one of eight bards still performing publicly in the Marrakesh region of southern Morocco. But most, like him, fear that their generation may be the last in a line that is as old as this medieval city.

These men descend from the era — long before radio and television, movie theaters and telephones — when itinerant narrators brought news and entertainment to country fairs and village squares…

Juan Goytisolo is a rare European expatriate who speaks Morocco’s Arabic dialect and understands the storytellers. A prominent Spanish writer who has lived here since the 1970’s, he is devoted to Jemaa el Fna and its artists. They inspired his novel “Makbara,” he said.

In a cafe overlooking the square, he spoke admiringly about the “old masters” he has known, their improvisations and pranks, and the tricks they use to capture and hold their audience. Some may start a fake fight to attract listeners. He recalled that “Sarouh, a very strong man who is dead now, would lift a donkey up into the air. As it started braying, people would come running. ‘You fools,’ he would yell at the crowd. ‘When I speak about the Koran nobody listens, but all of you rush to listen to a donkey.'”…

Mr. Goytisolo has been the driving force behind a movement to protect the square, which he calls a “great and rich cultural space, that is in danger of being drowned by commerce, by the pressure to develop.” The group has in recent years managed to block projects like a tall glass tower and an underground garage. Cars have now been banned altogether.

(Thanks for the link, Bonnie!)

Anyone interested in such storytelling should find a copy of Bridget Connelly’s Arab Folk Epic and Identity, a wonderful book that starts off describing the general tradition and goes on to present a detailed account of one of the most widespread of the siyar (plural of sira ‘biography; hero story, epic folktale’), the epic of the Bani Hilal, complete with lengthy bilingual quotes, musical notation, and photographs. She places the Arab epic tradition firmly among the world’s classics, with astute remarks on why it hasn’t gotten the respect it deserves: “By and large, the literarily adept recoiled from anything that departed from the Classical canon. Ibn Khaldun, virtually alone among medieval Arab scholars, …defended ‘the poems of the Arab Bedouins’ as ‘true poetry,’ and denounced pedantic scholars and philologists who recoil from oral, vernacular poetry, disdaining it for its lack of case endings.”

There’s a great deal of useful information at the pronunciation page of Syd Allan’s Beowulf site, which itself looks quite valuable:

These pages present work done by translators of Old English, and Beowulf scholars. I am a Beowulf hobbyist (how nerdy can you get!) and not an expert on Anglo-Saxon literature or translation. But I do own about 140 books on Beowulf and related topics, and I have tried to present information that will help others to get started in their studying of the poem…

I currently have 93 translations of Beowulf, and links on this site to images of the book covers and information about each book. Forty percent of the translations have not been transcribed yet, but I have transcribed all version published before 1902, and after 1998, and almost half of the ones in between.

The pronunciation page quotes some basic information about the OE writing system and poetic meter, and links to much more. (Via No-sword.)

In a story in today’s NY Times sports section, “No Good-Conduct Medal for Ugly Americans” by Selena Roberts (which the Times is hiding behind its annoying TimesSelect pay-to-read screen), a description of the Olympic ideal (“The Olympics are the one event where the type of self-absorbed behavior that is tolerated and even celebrated in the mainstream is taboo…”) is followed by the sentence “But how can anyone demand Diva Interruptis?”

In the first place, there is no Latin word “interruptis” [or rather, none that fits in this grammatical slot; as commentator Justin points out, it is the plural dative-ablative form of interruptus]; what Roberts meant to write was interruptus. In the second place, interruptus is a masculine form and diva is feminine; the phrase, if you insisted on using what seems to me a construction too silly even for the sports page, would be diva interrupta. But this is not about the illiteracy of sports reporters (though there is much to be said on that topic); it would be unfair and certainly unrealistic to expect the average American, even the average American reporter, to know Latin adjectival declension or the proper spelling of Latin borrowings. That’s what editors are for, which is what this is about. The editing of even the front section has gotten sloppier and sloppier, but it’s as if they don’t consider the sports section worth bothering with at all. Sports reporters can babble whatever gibberish pops into their heads, and the staff on 43rd Street merrily tosses it into the paper as is. I can imagine some copyeditor glancing at “Diva Interruptis” and thinking “That’s not right, is it? But who cares—it’s just sports!” Meanwhile, Grantland Rice and Red Smith toss restlessly in their graves.

A wonderful quote, allegedly from the Mahabharata:

“Well,” Brahma said, “even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five hundred.”

I assume this is a modern witticism attributed to Ancient Wisdom for greater impact, but on the off chance that the attribution is correct, I’d love to have the Sanksrit if there are any Mahabharatists in the audience. (Via Avva.)

Totally unrelated, but did you know the English word for a person from Lisbon is Lisboan (liz-BO-an)? I didn’t.

Khaled Mattawa is a poet and translator who was born in Libya and moved to the U.S. in 1979. I have his collection Ismailia Eclipse (The Sheep Meadow Press, 1996), from which comes this prose poem:

DAYS OF 1959
Warm rain in Baghdad, the butchers calling it a day. They’ve wrapped their meat in burlap, sent their servants home. It’s been a month since the last coup and the wailing from funeral tents hasn’t stopped. On a boat docking at the river bank, a black boy practices on his nai. Oblivious of the struggle between captains and kings, he sees bodies swaying to his music in the city’s new night club. His voice is sweet, and lately he has made a living reciting verses at the new martyrs’ graves.
Nai: a reed flute.

He has a website that my browser won’t let me access for some reason (I click on the link and nothing happens), but Google cache allows me to read the poems there, and I liked this stanza from his “Samovar Love Compendium” (each stanza of which begins with the same line):

I love the word samovar and I love
hats, skull caps my mother brought
from Mecca, one I wore rising at dawn
to pray, a fedora a lover bought me
because my face matched the dreary green,
and the one you hid under all summer,
the times I needed to touch your hair
but tucked my hand in my pocket instead.
It’s hard to love your hiding, my hesitancy,
and the words that die unsaid.

A post on Wordorigins reminded me of the curious history of this word, which began as a perfectly ordinary phrase meaning ‘daring to do.’ The OED’s first citation, from Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (c.1374), exemplifies the usage:

v. 837 Troylus was neuere vn-to no wight.. in no degre secounde, In dorryng don [v. rr. duryng do, dorynge to do] þat longeth to a knyght.. His herte ay wiþ þe firste and wiþ þe beste Stod paregal, to dorre don [v. rr. durre to do, dore don] that hym leste.

The online edition (by Skeat) I linked to [Book] v above [N.b.: I have deleted the link because in 2018 it redirects to a payday loan site — LH.] gives the passage thus:

And certainly in storie it is y-founde,
That Troilus was never un-to no wight,
As in his tyme, in no degree secounde
In durring don that longeth to a knight. [longeth ‘is appropriate to’]
Al mighte a geaunt passen him of might,
His herte ay with the firste and with the beste
Stood paregal, to durre don that him leste.

[paregal ‘fully equal’; durre don that him leste ‘dare (to) do what he wanted’ (leste = list)]

In the next century, Lydgate in his Chronicle of Troy imitated Chaucer in the following passage:

1430 Lydg. Chron. Troy II. xvi. And parygal, of manhode and of dede, he [Troylus] was to any þat I can of rede, In dorryng [v. rr. doryng(e] do, this noble worþy wyght, Ffor to fulfille þat longeþ to a knyȝt, The secounde Ector.. he called was. [edd. 1513, 1555 In derrynge do, this noble worthy wyght.]

The misprint in the 1513 and 1555 editions seems to have been the crucial factor, obscuring the connection with the verb and enabling Spenser to mistake it for some sort of nominal construction, which he picked up for use in The shepheardes calender (1579):

Oct. 65 For ever who in derring doe were dreade, The loftie verse of hem was loved aye. [Gloss., In derring doe, in manhood and chevalrie.]

That later magpie Sir Walter Scott saw the usage in Spenser, liked it, and stuck it into Ivanhoe (1820):

xxix, Singular.. if there be two who can do a deed of such derring-do. [Note. Derring-do, desperate courage.]

And everybody read Scott, so “derring-do” entered the general vocabulary, to vaguely puzzle readers for centuries to come.