Word of the Month: Watergate

1 June 2002

Thirty years ago this month, five men were arrested breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC. Among those arrested was James W. McCord, Jr., the security director for Republican President Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President. The investigation into the break-in would expose ever larger circles of corruption and abuses of power in the Nixon White House and would eventually, in August 1974, lead to the resignation of the president.

Watergate, as the collection of scandals came to be known, was the biggest American political scandal of the 20th century. It left an indelible mark on US history, politics, and on the American political lexicon. So, in honor of this 30th anniversary, our word of the month is:

Watergate, n., a hotel-apartment-office complex along the Potomac River in Washington, DC. In 1972, the Democratic National Committee had its offices in the complex and on 17 June of that year burglars working for the White House broke into the offices to plant listening devices. Watergate became the name of the associated scandal. Subsequent Washington scandals were commonly dubbed with the -gate suffix, such as Koreagate, Irangate, and Monicagate.

Other terms created or popularized by the scandal are:

Big Enchilada, n., the person in charge, the most important person or thing. Coined by Nixon’s Domestic Policy Advisor John Erlichman in March 1973 in reference to former Attorney General John Mitchell. The term follows in the tradition of big cheese, big fish, and bigwig. Erlichman claims he used enchilada because of his fondness for Mexican food.

Bug, n. and v., electronic eavesdropping device. From underworld slang going back to 1919, because a small microphone resembles an insect. Common in criminal argot and in crime and spy fiction before Watergate, the word gained widespread currency as a result of the press coverage of the break-in.

Cover-up, n. and v., concealment of wrongdoing, obstruction of justice. The term actually dates to the 1930s underworld slang, but was popularized by Watergate.

CREEP, n., unofficial acronym for the Committee to RE-Elect the President; the official abbreviation was CRP. Surprisingly a Democrat didn’t coin this derogatory acronym, but rather Republican National Committee Chairman Bob Dole did. He thought his organization was being given short shrift in the campaign.

Deep Throat, n., an informant, particularly the one that aided reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post in uncovering the Watergate scandal. That pair’s editor, Howard Simon, coined the name. The name is a play on the term deep background, newspaper jargon for a source who is only used to confirm what others have already told a reporter and who is never quoted—not even anonymously, and the title of the famous pornographic movie which was released in 1972 and quite popular at the time. The identity of Deep Throat has never been revealed.

Enemies List, n., a list of political opponents who are to be harassed and otherwise interfered with. The name was coined by White House Counsel John Dean who ordered the creation of the original list. Now used to refer to any such list of names.

Executive Privilege, n., the right of the US Executive Branch to withhold certain types of information from Congress and the public. While the concept goes back to the founding of the republic, the phrase is relatively new. It was first used in the 1950s and gained widespread use during Watergate.

Expletive Deleted, c.phr., phrase used in the publicly released transcripts of the Nixon White House tapes to mark where the president and his aides used profanity. The transcripts are filled with the phrase.

Follow the Money, c.phr., coined by Deep Throat as advice to Woodward and Bernstein. It refers to the investigative technique of tracing monetary payments to find who is involved a secretive venture.

Hardball, n. and adj., rough, aggressive competition. From the imagery of baseball v. softball, but the term isn’t originally from sports lingo. It was first used in 1944 in reference to the Chicago newspaper business. The term was widely used by the press to categorize the tactics of Nixon’s 1972 campaign and Watergate.

Plumber, n., one who plugs leaks of information to the press, the term was coined in 1970 by David Young, who along with G. Gordon Liddy, had the task of investigating White House leaks to the press. The name was later applied to the Special Investigations Unit, led by Liddy and Howard Hunt, which in 1971 took on this task of plugging leaks through illegal methods. Liddy’s and Hunt’s plumbers were most infamous for their failed break-in of the office of a psychiatrist in an attempt to uncover derogatory information about Daniel Ellsberg, a patient who had leaked The Pentagon Papers, an exposé about the prosecution of the Vietnam War, to the press.

Ratfuck, v., dirty tricks used to discredit an opponent during a campaign. Donald Segretti and Dwight Chapin coined the term during their college years in the late 1960s. They used it to refer to dirty tricks used in campus politics in Southern California. They brought the term with them to the campaign and the White House when they went to work for Nixon.

Saturday Night Massacre, n., the firing of three top Justice Department officials on 20 October 1973. On that Saturday night, White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refused and resigned. Haig then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned. Haig next called on Solicitor General Robert Bork, who finally fired Cox. Bork went on to contribute another word to the American political lexicon. Bork, v., to attack and defame someone in the media. The verb is from the successful Democratic effort to stop Bork’s nomination to the US Supreme Court in 1987. The Democratic borking of Bork was, in part, revenge for his role in the Saturday Night Massacre.

Smoking Gun, n., incontrovertible evidence of guilt. Coined by Republican congressman Barber Conable during the Watergate investigation. The original smoking gun was a 23 June 1973 tape of a conversation between Richard Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, where Nixon gave explicit instructions to have the CIA interfere with an FBI investigation of Watergate. The reference is to the imagery of finding a murderer still holding the smoking murder weapon.

Twisting in the Wind, c.phr., left exposed, abandoned. Another coinage of John Erlichman’s, he used the phrase “twisting slowly, slowly in the wind” in reference to the failed nomination of Acting FBI Director Pat Gray to the post full time. The phrase evokes the imagery of a corpse dangling from the gallows. Many other writers used the imagery before Watergate, but Erlichman supplied the exact wording for the catch phrase.

Lloyd's List, "She" No More

1 May 2002

Some things never change and some things just seem like they never do. One of those things was using the feminine pronoun when referring to a ship.

But Lloyd’s List, the daily newspaper of the shipping industry, announced on 22 March that it is abandoning the practice. From now on the publication will refer to ships as it.

Lloyd’s List tried to make the change four years ago, but reversed itself in the face of the overwhelming ire of naval traditionalists.

Ships have been referred to as she in English since at least 1375, and Lloyd’s List has been doing it since its founding in 1734.

But traditionalists need not abandon all hope. The Royal Navy still plans to call its ships she.

Prescriptivist's Corner: Gender-Neutral Personal Pronouns

1 May 2002

English is replete with sexually general words, such as anyone, everyone, person, and oneself. But it has no sexually general personal pronouns. There is it, but that pronoun is generally considered unacceptable to use with people.

The traditional answer to this situation was to use the masculine he, him, his in situations calling for sexual ambiguity. Many see this as sexist—and in some cases as silly, as a famous 1984 example from the New York State Assembly: “everyone will be able to decide for himself whether or not to have an abortion.”

So what to do about this conundrum?

The first choice is to recast the sentence to avoid use of a personal pronoun. Instead of saying “pass the ball to him,” say, “pass the ball to the point guard.” This doesn’t always work, however. Often trying to avoid use of personal pronoun becomes too complex and awkward.

When you can’t recast the sentence, the standard response has been to use he or she/him or her/his or hers, as in “throw the ball to him or her.” Unfortunately, this is also an awkward construction. This awkwardness can be reduced by using he or she intermittently, just often enough to make clear that the reference can be to either sex. In between, use the traditional masculine pronoun.

Another solution, common in American academic writing, is to simply alternate between he and she. Use he in one paragraph and she in the next—skipping strict alternation to maintain sense; in other words if you use she to refer to the point guard in one paragraph, continue to use she whenever referring to that particular individual.

A final solution that is gaining currency, over the objection of hardcore grammarians, is to use the plural they as a gender-neutral, singular, personal pronoun.

Use of the plural they and its related forms to refer to singular subjects of indefinite pronouns is an old and respected practice. Writers have noted the problem caused by the lack of gender-neutral third person pronoun for nearly a thousand years—it’s not just feminists who have complained.

Chaucer used the plural to refer to the indefinite: “And whoso fyndeth him out of swich blame, They wol come up…” (The Pardoner’s Prologue, c. 1395). Here the plural they refers to the indefinite whoso.

Other writers who’ve used this dodge include Shakespeare, the translators of the Authorized (King James) Bible, Byron, Austen, and Auden.

While use as a reference to indefinite pronouns has had widespread acceptance for centuries, many grammarians have objected over the use of they to refer to singular nouns of either sex. But this too is an old practice.

Swift used it: “every fool can do as they’re bid” (Polite Conversation, 1758). Other writers who’ve engaged in this practice include Thackeray and Orwell. It’s not as common as use to refer to indefinite pronouns, but it has existed for centuries and been used by many great writers.

Finally, in the last two decades, themself, as opposed to the standard themselves, has been picked by some to be a gender-neutral replacement for himself and herself. Traditionally, themself has been considered an incorrect form, although it was the preferred form up until about 1540, when it was replaced by themselfs and later themselves. This reintroduction of the old form in a new role offers one way out, although many bridle at this usage as ungrammatical. (And my version of Microsoft Word keeps automatically “correcting” it as an error as I write this article.)

Words and Politics: Homicide Bomber

1 May 2002

On 12 April, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer used the term homicide bomber to describe what had previously been called suicide bombers. “The president condemns this morning’s homicide bombing. […] These are not suicide bombings. These are not people who kill just themselves,” Fleischer said. “These are people who deliberately go to murder others, with no regard to the values of their own life. These are murderers.”
Fleischer is not the first to use the term. Various conservative political groups have been using it since at least March.

Political opinions aside, the linguistic question is how successful the White House will be in redefining the lingo of terrorism, and whether or not their choice is a sensible one.

Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson coined the term suicide bomber in October 1983 in reference to the bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. The term is apt because it describes the salient difference between a traditional and a suicide bombing. Terrorists traditionally favor bombs because they can be planted and the bomber can be long gone when the bomb explodes. With suicide bombings, this is not the case. The bomber has no intention of escaping.

Further, the choice of homicide is not one that suits the White House’s political purpose. Homicide is a morally neutral term. It simply describes an act that results in the death of another person. Homicides can be justifiable, and a state commits homicide when it executes a criminal. The words that express moral outrage at homicide are murder and manslaughter. The term that Fleischer was looking for is murderous bomber.

But the larger question is whether Fleischer, or anyone else, should attempt to deliberately alter the linguistic landscape. For the most part, such attempts are doomed to failure. Neologisms are successfully coined when the term fills a linguistic void. Suicide bomber was one such term. There was a need to distinguish a bomber who deliberately takes his or her own life from the traditional, anonymous kind.

There isn’t any such need for homicide bomber. While it’s not strictly redundant, bombings are all too often homicidal in nature. And the term bomber on its own carries opprobrium. Bucking the linguistic trend of the English language is rather futile.

It is highly unlikely that the term homicide bomber will enter the general vocabulary and have life beyond last month’s Sunday morning talk shows.

Book Review: The Etymological Bookshelf: Starter Set

1 May 2002

This month we’re doing something a little different with the book review. Instead of reviewing a single book, we’re going to cover the basic books that should be on the serious amateur English-language etymologist’s shelf. These are the fundamental research tools.

There are many great etymological books out there that are not listed here. Simply because a book is not covered here doesn’t mean it’s not a good source or that it isn’t useful. The books covered this month are the basic ones—the “go to” books that are the first off the shelf when an etymological question arises.

The first source isn’t actually a book at all and it won’t take up any space on your shelf. It’s the Oxford English Dictionary Online, http://www.oed.com. (See our complete review of the OED Online in the March 2002 issue.) The OED is the single best source for information on the English language. It contains over half a million words and over 2.5 million usage quotations. It is by far the greatest dictionary in the world. The online version consists of the second edition (1989), the three volumes of the Additions Series, and updated entries for the future third edition.

Whenever an etymological question arises, the first place to look should be the OED. The answers to most questions are only a few keystrokes away.

You can, of course, buy print copies of the second edition and the Addition Series—but not the updated third edition entries, which are only available online. But that’s a lot of book to be lifting on and off the shelf and you don’t have the keyword search capability that the online version provides. And we can’t overemphasize the importance of the search function. The OED site has an extremely powerful and flexible search engine—yet one that is also easy to use. (Which is rare; usually power and flexibility mean user unfriendliness.)

The chief drawback to the OED Online is price. The $550/year retail subscription price is prohibitive. If you don’t have access through an institution, you can get reasonably priced access through such places as the Quality Paperback Book Club (http://www.qpb.com). [Note: QPB no longer offers access to the OED.]

As great as the OED is, it is not perfect. It won’t answer all your questions. Its chief deficiency is in slang terms, especially American ones.

To fill this gap, the next on our list is the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, J.E. Lighter, editor. This comes in two volumes (so far). Volume One covers A-G and Volume Two covers H-O. Meticulously researched and including usage citations, RHHDAS is the best source for information on American slang expressions, at least from the first half of the alphabet.

Unfortunately, the demise of Random House’s dictionary division means that this work is probably not going to be completed. It is my understanding that Dr. Lighter is pursuing other publishers, and hopefully someone else will pick up the project. But for now, the second half of the alphabet is in limbo.

To find the answers to American slang expressions M-Z, the best place to look is Mitford Mathews’s Dictionary of Americanisms. Mathews’s work is a single volume. As such, it’s not as thorough as RHHDAS, but it’s still a very good research tool. Its chief drawback is age. Originally published in 1951, it obviously omits many recent slang expressions. Also, given the era it was published, it omits many profane and otherwise unsavory expressions.

Mathews is also out of print, but it’s readily available through used-book outlets, both online and in bricks-and-mortar stores.

That covers American slang, but there is still slang from Britain and the Commonwealth. The OED, as one might expect, does a better job with British slang expressions than it does with American ones, but it still falls short. The place to go for British slang is Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 8th Edition.

Partridge, a New Zealander transplanted to Britain, penned an enormous number of books on slang in the middle of the 20th century. His research, especially regarding dates, is notoriously sloppy and often inaccurate, but he remains the only source for the origins of many slang expressions. His posthumous editor, Paul Beale, has done much to correct Partridge’s errors in the DSUE’s 8th Edition.

That about covers it. Between these sources you should be able to find the answer to almost any etymological question. Some selected books on jargon, place names, and other highly specialized fields may need to be consulted for certain arcane expressions, but these cover the basics.

I would be remiss if I did not mention one other source, the Dictionary of American Regional English, Frederic Cassidy and Joan Houston Hall, editors. It’s not one of the basics because it is somewhat duplicative with RHHDAS. It does, however, have a slightly different focus. It doesn’t so much deal with slang, although many slang expressions are found in its pages, but it focuses on expressions that are used in particular regions of the United States.

The first three volumes of DARE cover A-O, and a fourth will be published later this year.
If you’re going to expand your bookshelf beyond the basics, these volumes should be among the first acquired.