prorogation / prorogue

22 September 2019

In September 2019, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked the queen to prorogue parliament, that is to discontinue its meetings without formal dissolution, in the run-up to the UK’s Brexit from the European community. The queen granted the request. Prorogation is a commonly used but little noticed parliamentary tool, and in the UK its traditionally used in a pro forma manner in the few days leading up to a new session or just prior to parliament’s dissolution and a new election. But Johnson used it to end debate on Brexit and prevent backbenchers from taking action on Brexit contrary to what he wanted. This particular instance of prorogation is of dubious constitutionality, and, as of this writing, is under review by the UK courts. [24 September: The UK Supreme Court ruled this prorogation of parliament unconstitutional, and parliament will return to session on 25 September as if it had never happened.] But where did the word come from?

The noun prorogation and the verb to prorogue are borrowings from Anglo-Norman French and ultimately from Latin. The Latin verb prorogare means to prolong, defer, extend in office.

Prorogation appears in English at the beginning of the fifteenth century with the now obsolete sense of prolongation or extension. From a Scottish text written c. 1400:

If hit likes the kyng of Skotlond to swere to the prorogacioun of this trewes.

By the middle of that century, the word was being used to mean to postpone or defer. From the Rolls of Parliament for 1453:

The Kyng [...] woll and grauntith to forbere and proroge and to putte in suspence, th’execution of leviyng of the fyndyng of the seid [...] men Archers [...] for the space of ii yeres.

And by 1455 it was being used in the sense of suspending parliament for a brief period:

For asmoche as the holy Fest of Cristemas approchith so nygh..it myght like the said Lieutenaunt and all the Lordes, this present Parliament to proroge, adjorne, or dissolve.

Sources:

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2007, s. v. prorogation, n. and prorogate, v.

poutine / pudding

14 April 2016

Poutine is a contender for the Canadian national dish, although whether or not it can unseat Kraft Dinner (i.e., Kraft macaroni and cheese) in overall popularity is questionable. But the origins of both the dish and its name are shrouded in mystery, and its pedigree is not that long.

Image of poutine

Image of poutine

Poutine is a dish of French fries covered in gravy and cheese curds. Well-made poutine is both delicious and artery-hardening. Originating in Quebec, it is widely available across Canada, even being served in fast food restaurants like McDonalds and Burger King—although many would argue that what is served in these chain restaurants does not qualify as poutine.

It has been claimed that a dish named poutine and consisting of fries and cheese curds, sans gravy, was first served in Warwick, Quebec by Fernand Lachance in 1957. Lachance allegedly added gravy to the mix in 1964. But evidence for this claim, as well as for the numerous other origin stories, is lacking. The earliest documentary evidence for the dish and its name is from 1978 in Canadian French and 1982 in English. Similar mixes of fries, gravy, and cheese have popped up from time to time in various locations, but the key differentiator in the Canadian dish is the use of cheese curds, not ordinary cheese.

The word poutine in reference to other dishes is older, though, and like the dish itself, the origin is a bit mysterious. There are two leading contenders, and one probably apocryphal origin. Quebecois have been using the word to refer to various desserts, or puddings, since at least 1810.

As a result, one line of thinking is that it is either a variant of the French pouding or a direct borrowing and alteration into Canadian French from the English pudding. The standard French pouding is itself a borrowing from pudding, which in turn is a borrowing from the Norman French bodeyn or bodin, meaning entrails or sausage. (The sausage sense is preserved in English in such dishes as blood pudding.) A direct borrowing from English, however, seems less likely as there is no explanation for a shift from the d to the t.

A second possibility is that poutine is a Quebecois term, originally meaning a mess, and then shifting in meaning as a result of its similarity to pouding or pudding. This explanation ties in with the story of its inventor being Lachance, who allegedly replied when a customer asked for fries and cheese curds, “ça va faire une maudite poutine” ("it will make a damned mess"). The problem with this explanation is there is no evidence of such a Quebecois usage meaning mess.

Sources:

The Anglo-Norman Dictionary Online Edition, 2000–06, s. v. bodins, bodeins.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, third edition, December 2006, s. v. poutine, n.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, third edition, September 2007, s. v. pudding, n.

Wikipedia, 11 April 2016, s. v. Poutine.

Oregon

13 August 2007

The name Oregon is of uncertain origin. Other than being of Native American origin and being first applied to the Oregon River, now known as the Columbia River, little is certain.

The name first appears in a 1765 petition to King George III by Robert Rogers, a colonial military officer. Rogers refers to the Ouragon River, saying it is an Indian name for the famed, but yet-to-be-seen-by-Europeans river of the west that would come to be known as the Columbia River. The name could be from the Connecticut-English pidgin word wauregan, meaning beautiful.

The name Oregon appears in print in Jonathan Carver’s 1778 Travels through the Interior Part of North America and William Cullen Bryant uses the name in his 1817 poem Thanatopsis:

Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there!

Bryant’s poem made the name famous and indirectly led to the naming of the territory and eventually the state.

An alternative hypothesis for the origin appears in a 1944 article in American Speech where it is postulated that the name comes from ouraconsint. The name appears on a French map from sometime before 1709 and the name is split into two lines, with -sint appearing below, giving the impression to a casual reader that the river’s name is ouracon. The river in question is the Wisconsin River, commonly called the Ouisconsing by the French. According to this hypothesis English explorers like Rogers confused the name with a river further to the west.

Sources:

Oxford English Dictionary, Oregon, n., 3rd Edition, June 2008.

William Cullen Bryant, “Thanatopsis,” in Songs of Three Centuries, ed. John Greenleaf Whittier (New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1817), 188.

George R. Stewart, “The Source of the Name Oregon,” American Speech 19, no. 2 (Apr 1944): 115-17.

OK Boomer

16 November 2019

The meme is sweeping the internet, but where did it originate?

Ok Boomer is a dismissive reply by a young person directed at a Baby Boomer. It is rather disrespectful of their elders, but after years of being blamed for not getting “real” jobs when the only available ones are at Starbucks or driving for Uber, being blamed for not buying houses while being saddled with crippling, student-loan debt, being blamed for the demise of various and sundry industries because they spend what little money they have on avocado toast, for being selfish and self-absorbed while dying on foreign battlefields in the longest wars in America’s history, which were, incidentally, started by Baby Boomers, can one really fault Millennials for being dismissive? In two words, OK Boomer sums up the sentiment that Boomers have been a privileged and coddled generation who never faced tough times like today’s younger generations are facing and are thus out of touch and not worth listening to.

(Full disclosure: I’m a Boomer. But having been born in 1963, at the tail-end of the generation, I identify more with Gen Xers.)

Like most such memes and slang, finding the exact origin is impossible. The earliest usage I’ve been able to find, however, is from 5 Sep 2019 on a gaming discussion board:

“Ok Boomer”

Whatever you say :D

*Next time though, there’s a “Reply” button in the bottom right corner on a forum post, for example, this one. Use it so we know for sure who you’re talking to! (Unless for some reason you can’t click on a simple button but act so big on a forum post)*

Undoubtedly, someone used OK Boomer before this date, but we’ll never know who or exactly when.

Sources:

Davies, Mark. Corpus of News on the Web (NOW), 2019.

Sammymom. ”Woop Woop.” Hypixel, 5 September 2019.

Urban Dictionary, 17 September 2019.

notorious

1 November 2013

Usage manuals like to point out that notorious refers to someone or something of unfavorable reputation and that the word should not be used to mean merely famous or notable. While this is true to an extent, like many questions of usage the answer is more complicated, and in fact few writers actually use the word mistakenly.

Notorius is a Medieval Latin word meaning “famous, well-known,” and when it was originally adopted into English it carried this value-neutral sense. Notorious isn’t recorded in English until the 1530s, but the adverb notoriously appears several decades earlier, around 1495, and since adjectives generally predate their adverbial forms it is believed that the adjective is at least this old.

Very quickly, however, the word started being associated with fame of an unsavory or infamous nature. The 1549 Book of Common Prayer, for example, uses the phrase “notorious synners.” It was from oft-heard uses like this that notorious acquired its unsavory reputation. But the sense of notorious with neutral, or even favorable, connotations did not go away and remains in use today. There is, however, a subtlety in its use.

When used to describe a person or persons, notorious carries the negative or infamous connotation, even if it is used humorously or in a mildly deprecating fashion, as when, for instance, in his diary of 20 September 1945, Harry Truman describes himself as a “notorious person,” clearly using the word self-deprecatingly to dispel the aura of fame and importance created by the presidency, and not simply to mean “famous” and certainly not to seriously hint that he was some kind of criminal.

But when used to describe things or situations, notorious can have the neutral meaning of simply noted or famous. It can be pejorative, but such connotation has to be derived from the context and not simply from the word itself. Thus you get descriptions of “notorious dance marathons” of the 1920s or of E=mc2 as a “notorious equation.”

Most writers and native speakers of English understand this subtle distinction, even if it is only a tacit understanding, and will seldom use notorious incorrectly.

Sources:

“notorious, adj.1 and adv,” “notoriously, adv.,” Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, 2003.

“notorious,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage, 1994, 668–69.