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A Language Log post by Mark Liberman introduces me to a very interesting word which he spells “dykes,” meaning ‘diagonal cutting pliers’ (“as a tool term, dykes is always plural, like scissors“). Now, googling “diagonal cutting pliers, dykes” (without the quotes) gets me 367 hits, while changing “dykes” to “dikes” almost doubles the number, to 706, so there may be a slight preference for the latter spelling, but both the totals and the difference between them are small enough that it’s impossible to tell. One wants, therefore, to consult a dictionary—but as Mark says, the word “isn’t in the AHD, M-W Unabridged, the OED, or Encarta.”

I think this is really strange. As far as I know, dykes is the standard American term for this ubiquitous and useful tool. In my experience as a child working on bicycles and later cars with my friends, as a mechanic in the army, and hanging around electronics technicians at Bell Labs, “dykes” was as common as a term as hacksaw or chisel. I mean, what else would you call them?

It is indeed strange; I don’t recall previously seeing a normal word of long standing, even one of limited circulation, that was not in any dictionary; that snub is usually reserved for recent slang terms. For what it’s worth, this site says “The diagonal cutting pliers, commonly called ‘diagonals’ or ‘dikes’…”, which suggests a shortening of diagonal and would seem to support the spelling with i. But one JAX in this discussion [2024: not archived, alas] says “Dykes was the surname of the guy who invented the best of its time wire cutters. ‘side Dykes’ was the name of the later diagonal model.” Until the lexicographers take note of this neglected lexical item and settle on an etymology, you can pick whichever spelling looks right to you and no one can prove you wrong.

Thanks to the indefatigable aldiboronti (who should really set up shop as a linguablogger), my attention has been directed to a wonderful essay, “The Perils of Lexicography,” by Judith Robertson, an Australian lexicographer who takes the trouble to investigate the true origins of a number of purportedly Australian words:

I was recently examining Jonathon Green’s Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang (1998). This work contains 70,000 words and phrases from a variety of English-speaking countries. In its Acknowledgements Green admits that ‘the profession of lexicography is, inevitably, a plagiaristic one, a linguistic Pacman that moves on, gobbling up its predecessors as it goes’. But there are very real dangers in this kind of plagiarism…

Cornelius Crowe’s Australian Slang Dictionary has been widely used by scholars researching Australian English. In spite of the book’s title, it obviously includes words that are not exclusively Australian. But what scholars have failed to realise is the fact that almost every entry in Crowe’s dictionary has been plagiarised from other dictionaries… Matsell’s Secret Language of Crime and the anonymous Slang Dictionary of New York are not well known in Australia. The entries in both American dictionaries are close to identical, and both dictionaries were produced for the New York Police. The 1997 reprint of the Slang Dictionary of New York describes the work as ‘the comprehensive dictionary to which novelists and historians turn to make the streets of 19th century America come alive’. Unfortunately, Cornelius Crowe turned to these American dictionaries to make the streets of nineteenth-century Australia come alive…

There is a very good lexicographical lesson to be learned from all this. Although it is common practice to use other dictionaries, and it makes sense to do so, the lexicographer who uses dictionaries without discretion is in great peril. And the lexicographer who uses only other dictionaries for evidence of the existence of a word is in greater peril.

Ouch! I’ve already emended the false entries in my copy of Cassell (a superb work otherwise), and I hope more lexicographers are doing the unglamorous but essential work of eliminating such fake words from reference works.

Dick & Garlick has a thought-provoking post on Jamyang Norbu’s

five-part essay [Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5] in the Times of Tibet which attempts to refute propaganda myths about the Chinese ‘modernization’ of the Tibetan language. In response to the claim that the language lacked a scientific vocabulary prior to Chinese intervention, Norbu methodically lists every neologism adopted in the early 20th century, demonstrating that the Tibetans had names for modern inventions like electricity, radio, photography and the airplane long before the occupation of their homeland. In the process, he creates an unusual portrait of a society and a language adapting to modern times.

Dick & Garlick quotes some of the borrowings used in the early part of the century:

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Another entry from Davidson I had to share:

Gallimaufrey (gallimaufry, and other variant spellings), an obsolete culinary term, corresponding to the French word gallimaufré [actually galimafrée—LH], meaning a dish of odds and ends of food, a hodge-podge.

The obscurity surrounding the origin of this word, whether in the French or English version, prompted Dallas (1877) in Kettner’s Book of the Table to compose one of the most elaborate and far-reaching essays in culinary etymology which has ever been written. He devoted over 14 pages to the matter, treating also several other words (galimatias, salmagundi, salmi, etc. — even Hamlet’s ‘miching malicho’ and the Anglo-Indian mulligatawny) which he perceived to be connected by the root ‘ma’, meaning in his opinion a small bird or chicken and serving as an important piece of evidence for the previous existence of a language, possibly older than Sanskrit, which had already been lost in medieval times but which was the source of numerous words used in the kitchen.

Although the term itself is of little consequence, the fact that it engendered this towering edifice of etymological speculation is more than enough to warrant giving it an entry.

Lest I leave you with the impression that Dallas was simply an idiot, I’ll also quote his robust explanation (found at the Food Timeline) of the history of the Chateaubriand steak:

Take another example of mystification, and it must be added, of exceeding folly—to use no stronger epithet. It is connected with the illustrious name of Chateaubriand. One of the foremost clubs in London one day changed its cook; and its members were astonished to find that the steak which had formerly been served to them under the name filet de boeuf was now always announced as a Chateaubriand. The cook was called to account. What was the meaning of the new name? Why should plain Englishmen be puzzled with a new name—the slang of the kitchen? Why should they not, as of old, get the fillet [to which they] were accustomed? The cook had really nothing to say. He could only tell that a Chateaubriand was the fashionable name in Paris for a steak cut from the ordinary fillet-steaks—nearly two inches. The members of the club were not satisfied with this explanation; and to the great disgust of the chef, who felt the sublimity of the name of Chateaubriand, the order was given that henceforth a steak from the fillet should be announced as before on other bills under the time-honoured name of filet de boeuf.

They were quite right; and even if the cook, better informed, had been able to give them the true history and meaning of a Chateaubriand, there can be little doubt that they would have still arrived at the same decision. He was correct in stating that a Chateaubriand is cut from the best part of the fillet, and is nearly twice the ordinary thickness of steak: but is this all? The thickness of the steak involves a peculiar method of cooking it. It is so thick that by the ordinary method it might be burnt on the surface when quite raw inside; and therefore—though the new method is neglected and is even forgotten very much—it was put upon the fire between two other slices of beef, which, if burnt upon the grill, could have been thrown away. It may still be asked, what has this to do with Chateaubriand, that his name should be attached to a steak so prepared? Here we come into a region of culpable levity. Chateaubriand published his most famous work under the name of Le Génie du Christianisme. The profane wits of the kitchen thought that a good steak sent to the fire between two malefactor steaks was a fair parody of the Génie du Christianisme. If I remember rightly it was at Champeaux‘ in the Place de la Bourse that this eccentric idea took form and burst upon Paris. As to the name, it is needless to say a word; as to the good sense of the mode of cooking the steak, judgement is pronounced in the fact that, though the Chateaubriand still remains as thick as ever, it is rare now to see it grilled between two other steaks—that being too extravagant. Indeed, in Gouffé‘s great work on cookery, which must always be mentioned with respect for the good sense and taste which pervade it, there is not a hint given that the Chateaubriand is to be cooked, or was ever cooked, between the two robber steaks. Most cookery books say not one word of the Chateaubriand, which ranks now as the prime steak of the French table, and which appears in Parisian dinner bills to bewilder the benighted Englishman with a magnificent but unintelligble name.

Update. Jim of Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey, who has an understandable interest in the subject, has posted a German etymology of galimafrée („geröstete Fleischreste‟). No pre-Sanskritic culinary syllables, I’m afraid.

An interesting article, “Proverbs and prejudice: El Indio in Hispanic proverbial speech” by Shirley L. Arora (De Proverbio, Vol. 1, no. 2, 1995):

The proverbial speech of Hispanic America preserves, even today, numerous traces of the interaction between explorers, conquerors, or settlers and the native populations they found in the various regions of the so-called New World, while printed sources record others that have apparently disappeared from current usage. Many, though not all, of these expressions involve stereotypes of the Native American, some resembling those found in English, others diverging markedly from them.

A little long and could have used editing, but there’s a lot of good data there. (Via dhruva‘s MetaFilter post.)

Avva has announced a wonderful find: the original source of the epigraph to Nabokov’s Dar (The Gift, currently my favorite of his novels). The epigraph reads:

Дуб — дерево. Роза — цветок. Олень — животное. Воробей — птица. Россия — наше отечество. Смерть неизбежна.
П. Смирновский.
Учебник русской грамматики.

[The oak is a tree. The rose is a flower. The deer is an animal. The sparrow is a bird. Russia is our fatherland. Death is inevitable.
P. Smirnovskii, Textbook of Russian Grammar]

It sounds too good to be true, and one could be forgiven for assuming Nabokov made it up, but Avva links to an image of the actual page; the quoted line, which can be seen in its full splendor at the top of his entry, is at the upper left of the page image. (It turns out to be a series of examples illustrating section 10, which concerns gender; I’m not sure how the examples help, since only the last uses an adjective to make explicit the gender of a noun—the rest are simple equations of two nouns, though it’s true that examples of all three genders are given.) This makes me very happy.

Daniel W. Mosser has a good website on “The Evolution of Present-Day English” that has pages on each phase of the history of English, starting with Indo-European. I’m too familiar with the material to be sure of this, but it seems pitched at a level accessible to everyone, whatever their prior acquaintance with the subject. (Thanks to aldiboronti at Wordorigins for the link.)

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John Emerson of Idiocentrism (where incidentally you will find a new section on “Frankophilia”: “All the way back to the Chrétien de Troyes and the Song of Roland, the French have had a knack for lewdness, irony, and the freedom of women”) sent me a link to a page called “A Non-Exhaustive Euro-Hannic Transcription Engine: English, French, German, and Chinese Romanisations of Chinese.” Very useful comparative charts, and as an added bonus (since it’s on a Marxist site) you get the amusement of occasional references to “comrades” and injunctions like “‘Jiang Zhongzheng’ (adopted after entering politics) is a more admiring name for Chiang Kai-shek than is ‘Jiang Jieshi’—and thus to be avoided.”

Avva has a thread about words that one knows from one language and feels the lack of in another; he kicks it off by saying that he misses the English noun mind in Russian and Hebrew, the Hebrew word stam ‘simply, just’ (he explains its wide range of uses here) in English and Russian, and the Russian word ved’ ‘you see; you know; after all; isn’t it?’ in English. If you read Russian, you’ll find lots of interesting suggestions.

I have previously posted about the use and abuse of y’all, and I thought I’d mention that there’s a vigorous discussion going on at MetaFilter about the fact that “The use of ‘y’all’ is slowly but steadily gaining acceptance in standard English far outside…’the South’.” There are a few idiots and bigots, but in general I’m pleased with the standard of discourse, which has risen noticeably (on language-related topics) in the three or four years I’ve been following the site.