Book Review: Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words

1 January 2003

Bill Bryson, a writer best known for his humorous travel books but also the author of two books on the English language, has recently produced a usage guide. Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words is an updating of his 1983 Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words and Phrases (now out of print).

In the book, Bryson lists a fair number of words and phrases that are commonly misused, misspelled, or confused. A very good writer in his own right, Bryson’s advice is usually sound and practical, although he does stray a bit into the realm of personal idiosyncrasies and stylistic preferences and the book contains more than its fair share of errors.

Readers may be disappointed by the lack of Bryson’s trademark humor in this work. His travel commentaries are witty and fun reads, but this is much more the prim, proper usage and, though Bryson would probably be loath to say it, style guide.

But beyond the lack of humor, which may be disappointing but is hardly a flaw in a reference book, the central question is whether or not this book is really needed. The market is crowded with usage and style manuals and this one adds little. It is shorter than most and readers would be much better served by buying the more comprehensive Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern American Usage or the classic Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. Bryson writes in a simpler, more straightforward style than most of the other usage editors and he notes in his introduction that he deliberately omits grammatical jargon. While this may be helpful for someone looking for a quick answer on a particular point of usage, often the in-depth grammatical discussion is what is most useful about these guides and any serious writer should be undaunted by grammatical jargon.

The book also suffers a bit from being a revision. Several recent troublesome words, like proactive, are not to be found and several fairly obscure Briticisms, like the spelling of Sca Fell in the Lake District, remain. Bryson also needs to update his references. He refers to the first edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, but the current one is the fourth (to be fair, the third was current when he was writing this). He also refers to several idiosyncrasies of the original OED that were corrected in the second edition, published in 1989 (e.g., the original OED’s insistence on spelling the poet’s name Shakspere and the acceptable plural forms of compendium). He also continually references Gower’s 1965 updating of Fowler, a fine work for its time but nearly half a century old. These outdated references make one wonder if he is really up on the most current usage.

While Bryson’s advice is usually reasonable, he has a tendency to impose his own stylistic preferences. In one howler, he states “celibacy does not, as is generally supposed, indicate abstinence from sexual relations. It means only to be unmarried.” Well, if a word is “generally supposed” to mean something, then it does mean that. In his introduction he acknowledges that it is consensus that governs English usage, but he ignores that consensus here. If one is writing a theological treatise, then it might be useful to maintain the distinction between celibacy and chastity, but in most other cases the distinction serves no purpose. In several other cases he demands usage of a jargon sense of a word that is at odds with its commonly accepted meaning (e.g., insisting that gendarme is a soldier, not a policeman, that the legal jargon term hanged, rather than hung, is the only acceptable usage for executions, and that the classical sense of nemesis is the only proper one).

Other personal idiosyncrasies that make their way into the book’s pages are his insistence that the spelling barbeque is improper. To be sure, it is not the most common one (which is barbecue) but it is a perfectly acceptable variant. Similarly, his insistence that the pronunciation of buoy must be /boy/ and not /boo ee/ is without foundation.

Other times his wording is sloppy. He says irregardless is not a “real word.” To which I repeat Jesse Sheidlower’s classic retort, “If it’s not a word, what is it? A ham sandwich?” Irregardless is nonstandard and should be avoided in formal writing, but it is a commonly used word. In another entry on not confusing the two US Senators Bob Kerrey and John Kerry, Bryson refers to Bob Kerrey’s Vietnam service where his troops “murdered” innocent civilians. The word Bryson should have used is killed, or at least added an allegedly. Someone with Bryson’s journalistic background should know the distinction between murder and killing and he perhaps should have made this an entry in the book. He is also a bit harsh on writers who, as he says, “misspell” the name Khrushchev, ignoring the difficulties of transliterating from the Cyrillic.

Bryson also makes some technical errors in some entries. He does not seem to understand trademarks and trade names. And in another entry he misses an important lesson on the definitions of mean, median, and average (and leaves mode out of the discussion altogether).

It is worth restating here that overall Bryson gives good, solid advice. The flaws mentioned here, while significant, are not typical of the quality found in the book. The number of useful tips outweighs the number of errors and idiosyncrasies. But the number and frequency of the flaws is, to use Bryson’s own word, troublesome.

Most people will only have room for one usage manual on their bookshelf, and for those this is not the best choice out there. Those who have created a personal library of such books, however, may want to take a look at it.

Hardcover: 224 pages, Broadway Books, ISBN: 0767910427, 1st edition (August 2002), $19.95.

Word of the Month: Brand

1 January 2003

This month, a US Federal District Court judge will rule on whether or not Microsoft has the right to trademark the term Windows. Lindows.com, a maker of Linux computer operating systems, has asked the judge to summarily dismiss a lawsuit against them in which Microsoft claims that Lindows.com is infringing on their trademark and brand. For their part, Lindows.com claims that windows was in common use as a computer term for rectangular graphic user interface displays before 1983 when Microsoft began marketing their Windows brand and that no company has a right to exclusive use of common English words.

As a result, brand is the word of the month. A brand is the name of a product or company, a trademark. By extension, the brand is also the values that customers and the public associate with a product or company. The term comes from the practice of literally branding products, or the casks and crates that contain the product, with a hot iron. The idea of brand as a marketing tool is relatively recent, only dating to 1827. Brand name dates to 1921. Brand image appears in 1958 and brand loyalty a few years later in 1961.

Even more recent is the verb to brand. The sense meaning to burn with a hot iron dates to the 15th century, but the marketing verb is very recent. Branding, to a marketer, is the process of building a positive corporate and product image in the minds of the public.

The word brand is found in Old English and originally meant fire or a burning piece of wood. It is from this that we get to brand, meaning to burn a mark into something. The term brand new also comes from this, being something still hot from the forge or furnace where it was made.

Brands, or at least their verbal and graphical expressions, are one of the three types of intellectual property. The term intellectual property, or as it is often abbreviated IP, only dates to 1845 and is American in origin, although the legal concept of intellectual property is much older. Intellectual property consists of patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Patents (1588) protect physical objects or processes. The term is a clipping of letters patent, which were open letters from the crown conferring some specific right upon an individual, such as the right to exclusively manufacture a product. Copyrights (1735) protect expressions of ideas, verbal, graphical, or musical. Both patents and copyrights extend protection for a limited period.

The third type, trademark (1571), is different. Trademarks, the term coming from the marks placed on a product to identify its manufacturer, are of unlimited duration, but they must be used continuously and must be defended when challenged by competitors.

This last makes trademarks an interesting study in onomastics, or the study of names. Many brand or trade names have interesting histories. Many, perhaps most, come from the names of the inventors. But there are many that do not, acquiring their brand names from any number of odd sources. In the paragraphs that follow, we will discuss a few of these.

Aspirin was originally a trade name used by the German firm Bayer, aspirin is from the German Acetylirte Spirsäure + an -in suffix. The German term is translated as acetylated spiraeic acid, a.k.a. acetylsalicylic acid. The drug was invented by Felix Hoffman in 1897. Bayer obtained the German trademark on aspirin in 1899 and put the product on the market in 1914. Aspirin is still a registered trademark of Bayer in some 90 countries, but not in the United States, France, or Britain. Britain and France, who were fighting a war with Germany at the time, never recognized the trademark at all. When the United States entered the war in 1917, Bayer’s US operations were seized by the government and put up for auction. Bayer’s US plant and trademark were bought by Sterling Drug Company. As a result “Bayer” products sold in the United States were not made by Bayer, at least not until 1994 when Bayer finally bought Sterling and reacquired the right to use its own name in the United States. Aspirin received a further blow in 1921 when the US Supreme Court ruled that it had become the common word for the substance and could no longer be used as a trademark—setting the precedent requiring companies to vigorously defend their trademarks against becoming generic terms.

Audi automobiles are named, in a fashion, after their original manufacturer. August Horsch started his first automobile company in 1899, with the first cars rolling off the production line in 1901. But in 1909, Horsch was forced out of the business by his financial backers and was forbidden to use his name in any new automobile venture. Undeterred, Horsch founded another company, using the Latin translation of his name, Audi, which means to hear. The first Audi cars were produced in 1910.

Cadillac is another eponymous automobile manufacturer, although in this case Cadillac had nothing to with the company or even with automobiles. The Cadillac Motor Car Company began producing cars in 1903. The company took its name from Antoine de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, who founded Detroit in 1701. Cadillac is a town in southwest France. The Cadillac company later became part of General Motors.

Castrol motor oil gets its name from a blend of castor and oil. Castor oil was a common base for engine lubricant in the opening decades of the 20th century. Most Americans are probably unaware that the firm is actually British. Castrol was first produced by the Wakefield Motor Oil Company of London in 1909. The company changed its name to that of its product in 1960. Burmah Oil Company bought Castrol in 1966, and BP bought Burmah-Castrol in 2000.

Coca-Cola is generally considered the most valuable brand name in the world. The name was coined in 1886 by Frank Robinson, bookkeeper to John Pemberton, the Atlanta druggist who founded the firm. The name is a combination of two of the drink’s original constituents, extracts from coca leaves and cola nuts. (Fearing backlash by rising anti-drug forces, coca was all but eliminated from the formula by 1902, with only one grain per 400 ounces of syrup. But because Coca-Cola feared charges of false advertising and loss of trademark, these minimal amounts of both coca and cola were kept in the formula until 1929.) Pemberton registered Coca-Cola as a trademark in 1893. Neither portion of the name is considered a trademark on its own, hence there are many soft drinks marketed as colas. Although, courts have ruled that obvious imitations like Cold Cola and Koka Nola are violations of Coca-Cola’s trademark.

The alternate brand name for Coca-Cola, Coke, began life as an informal popular name for the drink. It is attested to as early as 1909. The name became so popular so quickly that by the end of World War I a competitor, the Koke Company, was using a variant on the name to sell a similar soda. Coca-Cola sued Koke for trademark infringement, even though it had never registered the Coke trademark nor used it in marketing. And in 1920 the US Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Holmes, ruled that the name Coke was the property of Coca-Cola and that Koke was guilty of trademark infringement. (Holmes also ruled that the absence, for all practical purposes, of coca extracts in the syrup did not constitute false advertising, paving the way for the complete elimination of coca from the formula a few years later.) The name Coke began appearing on bottles in 1941 and was registered in 1945.

Drambuie’s name has its origins in Scottish history. When the Jacobite rebellion of 1746 collapsed after the Battle of Culloden, the rebellion’s leader, Bonnie Prince Charlie, fled to the Isle of Skye and hid from the English. The next year he sailed for France, leaving Scotland for good. Supposedly, before he left the Young Pretender gave the recipe for his personal liqueur to John MacKinnon of Strathaird in gratitude for MacKinnon’s friendship and help in staying hidden. The MacKinnon family kept the formula and made Drambuie for their personal consumption for 150 years. Then in 1893, Malcolm MacKinnon registered the name Drambuie. The MacKinnons started selling the liqueur in 1910. Drambuie is a combination of the Gaelic dram (drink) and either buidheach (pleasing) or buidh (golden, yellow).

Esso is a representation of the pronunciation of the initials S.O., for Standard Oil. John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil in 1868 and within ten years the company controlled 95% of the refining capacity of the United States. In 1911, the US Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil violated anti-trust laws and was broken up into “baby Standards.” Standard Oil of New Jersey inherited the Esso trademark, but was only allowed to use that trademark in the Mid-Atlantic States and overseas. In 1972, Esso changed its name to Exxon in order to market its products across the United States under a single name. The name Esso is still used in some overseas markets and there are a handful of Exxon-owned gas stations in the United States that still use the name Esso in order to keep the trademark alive domestically.

The name Exxon was the result of one of the largest branding efforts in history, an effort that included one of the earliest uses of computers in market research. Over 10,000 suggestions were winnowed down until only Exxon was left. The name was chosen because it was distinctive and yet meaningless.

Frisbee, the flying disk toy, has a name that is shrouded in anecdote, so much so that the origin of the name cannot be determined for certain. We do know that the Wham-O toy company of San Gabriel, California bought the rights to the first commercial disk, the Pluto Platter, in 1955. Two years later, Wham-O changed the name to Frisbee and they registered the trademark two years after that. It is commonly thought that the name is an alteration of the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Legend has it that tossing Frisbie pie tins about was a popular activity on the nearby Yale campus during the 1940s and 50s. But how the name crossed the continent to California is uncertain. It has been suggested that Wham-O founder Rich Knerr stopped at Yale during a Pluto Platter marketing tour and discovered students tossing the Frisbie pie tins. Knerr believed this to be a superior name, changed the spelling to Frisbee, and marketed the toy under that name. Wham-O altered the spelling to avoid trademark infringement on the bakery, but it didn’t really matter as the bakery went out of business the next year.

Hoover is not the name of the inventor of the vacuum cleaner. Rather, William H. Hoover was a businessman who bought the rights to a vacuum invented by a J. Murray Spangler. Spangler, a janitor in an Ohio department store, created a device to make his job easier. Spangler sold the rights to Hoover and disappeared into obscurity. Hoover, who sold his first vacuum cleaner in 1908, got rich. None of this is unusual in the world of business, nor would it be etymologically interesting, except that in Britain to hoover has become a verb meaning to vacuum a rug. Hoover started exporting its vacuum cleaners to Britain in 1912. By 1926, the verb had arisen. The verb has never caught on in the device’s country of origin, being restricted to British use. Although in the 1980s, to hoover became a US slang verb meaning to greedily devour food and, especially, cocaine.

Kodak is a good example of a brand name that was created completely from scratch. It has no intrinsic meaning, nor does it carry associations or allusions to anything else. Kodak is etymologically interesting because its coiner, George Eastman, recorded exactly how he came up with it, a very rare occurrence in the world of word origins. “A trade name must be short,” wrote Eastman, “vigorous, incapable of being misspelled to an extent that will destroy its identity, and, in order to satisfy trademark laws, it must mean nothing. The letter K had been a favorite with me—it seemed a strong, incisive sort of letter. Therefore the word I wanted had to start with K. Then it became a question of trying out a great number of combinations of letters that made words starting and ending with K. The word Kodak is the result.”

Eastman had formed the Eastman Dry Plate Company in 1881, so called because it produced photographic glass plates with a dry coating of chemicals, as opposed to “wet photography.” Two years later he revolutionized photography by creating the first photographic film, eliminating the need for glass plates. In 1888, his company produced the Kodak camera—the world’s first practical consumer camera. Because of the commercial success of the Kodak, the company changed its name to Eastman Kodak in 1892.

It is only by happenstance that Lego means I study or I assemble in Latin. It was coined in 1934 by Danish carpenter and toy maker Ole Kirk Christiansen. The name is actually from the Danish leg godt, meaning play well. Only afterwards did Christiansen realize the name had positive connotations in Latin. The familiar Lego brick was introduced in 1949.

Listerine is not named after its inventor; rather it is named after Joseph Lister, a British physician who in 1865 became the first to use antiseptics in surgery, sterilizing his instruments with heat and using carbolic acid to clean the wound. Across the pond in the United States, the Warner Lambert Company appropriated his name and first marketed Listerine in 1879 as a general purpose antiseptic, formulated for surgical use. In 1895, it was marketed to dentists. It was not until 1914 that Listerine was sold over the counter—the first commercially available mouthwash. Lister, who lived until 1912, objected to this commercial use of his name. It is not certain whether he objected because he thought commerce was beneath him or because he was never paid for the use of his name.

Maxwell House did not start out as the name of a brand of coffee. Originally, it was the name of a luxury hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1892, a wholesale grocery salesman named Joel Cheek managed to sell his own blend of coffee to the Maxwell House hotel. The coffee served at the hotel gained a local reputation for quality and Cheek began selling the blend elsewhere under the Maxwell House name. In 1928, Cheek changed the name of his company to Maxwell House. The slogan good to the last drop was allegedly first uttered by President Theodore Roosevelt who stayed at the hotel in 1903.

The Mercedes automobile is named after the daughter of Austrian racecar driver Emil Jellinek. He bought a specially modified Daimler Phoenix in 1898 and the following year raced it in the Tour de Nice. It was the fashion in those times for drivers to enter races under a pseudonym, and Jellinek used Monsieur Mercedes, after his nine-year-old daughter. Jellinek won the race and there was considerable interest among other drivers and fans in acquiring a “Mercedes” car. Daimler was happy to oblige by stepping up production and a brand was born. The trademark was registered in 1902.

Mitsubishi is unusual in that the company is actually named after its logo. Mitsubishi means three diamonds in Japanese and the corporate symbol is just that. The company got its start in 1870 as the Tsukomo Shokai shipping company. Three years later it changed its name to Mitsubishi Shokai, the second in long series of name changes. The huge conglomerate was broken up after World War II and now there are many different corporate entities that use the Mitsubishi name, with the automobile manufacturer being the best known in the United States.

Like Coca-Cola, Palmolive gets its name from two constituents of the original product. Milwaukee soap manufacturer B.J. Johnson began selling Palmolive soap in 1898. The bases for his product were palm and olive oils. The soap was a best seller and in 1916 like many companies Johnson changed the corporate name to that of its best-known product. Ten years later, Palmolive merged with the Peet Brothers, a Kansas City soap maker to become Palmolive-Peet. Finally, in 1930, the company merged with the Colgate Company to become Colgate-Palmolive-Peet. In 1953, the company dropped Peet from its name.

Quaker Oats is a rarity, a company that uses religious imagery in its branding. But the company does not and never has had any true association with the Society of Friends (Quakers); they just use the name and a picture of a Colonial-era Quaker. Furthermore, Quakers are not particularly known for eating oatmeal or other breakfast cereals. The Quaker Mill Company was founded in 1877 by Henry Seymour and William Heston. There are two tales as to how the company got its name. One is that Seymour read an article about the Quakers and was impressed by the religion’s values of purity, honesty, and strength. Seymour, who was looking for a corporate name, thought that his company would benefit from those same values. The second story is that Heston saw a picture of William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, and that inspired him to think of positive corporate values and brand equity. The Society of Friends initially objected to the name and even tried, unsuccessfully, to get the US Congress to prohibit the use of religious names and symbols in trademarks. In 1901 the company merged with two other cereal manufacturers to become Quaker Oats. In 2001, the company was bought by PepsiCo, and is now a division of that conglomerate.

Scotch Tape, like Quaker Oats, has no direct connection with its namesake; there is nothing Scottish about it. But in this case the original values associated with the name were not complimentary. In 1925 the 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) Company began producing masking tape for use in painting automobiles. In order to reduce costs, 3M reduced the amount of adhesive on the tape. Unfortunately this resulted in a tendency for the tape to fall off half way through the painting process. Customers derisively started referring to it as “Scotch” tape because 3M was so cheap. The name stuck, even though 3M quickly corrected the deficiency by adding more adhesive. Eventually, 3M gave up fighting the inevitable, registered it as a trademark, and turned it into a brand that connotes quality instead of fiscal prudence.

Velcro was invented in Switzerland in the early 1940s, but the name was not coined until around 1957. The name is a French acronym for velours croché, or hooked velvet.

Xerox is a name that is continually in danger of losing its proprietary status as people use it as a generic name for a photocopy. The process of photocopying was invented by Chester Carlson in 1938. Carlson referred to it as electrophotography in his patent application. In 1947 the Haloid Company acquired the rights to Carlson’s patents and the following year re-dubbed the process xerography, from the Greek xero- (dry) + -ography (as in photography). That same year Haloid also registered the trademark Xerox, using the distinctive two Xs (Cf. Exxon). The Haloid Company changed its name to Xerox in 1961.

Zipper began its life as a trademark of the rubber manufacturer B.F. Goodrich. Goodrich did not invent the slide fastener; they had been in existence since 1893 and had generally been known as hookless fasteners. But in 1923 Goodrich started manufacturing rubber overshoes with a slide fastener, which it dubbed Zipper Boots. Goodrich registered the trademark in 1925. Allegedly it was B.F. Goodrich himself who came up with the name, after the sound the boots made upon being fastened. By 1928, the term zipper was already making its way into generic use. Goodrich sued in an attempt to protect the trademark. It won the case, but the victory was limited to the full term Zipper Boots. Goodrich lost control of the rights to the ordinary zipper.

American Dialect: Pennsylvania

1 December 2002

Pennsylvania is unique among the fifty states in that it has two very distinct major dialectical centers, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Many states have internal variations of dialect, New Jersey for instance is split down the middle with half the state paying homage to New York City and the other have speaking like Philadelphians. But no other state has two urban centers each with its own dialect.

Philadelphia Dialect
The city of brotherly love is the only major urban center on the East Coast with a rhotic dialect. That is Philadelphians don’t drop their Rs the way New Yorkers, Bostonians, and Southerners do. But Philadelphia has other dialectical markers, mostly regarding the pronunciation of vowel sounds.

One such marker is the short E, which in Philly has an /uh/ sound after an R. So merry and Murray sound the same. Linguist William Labov of the University of Pennsylvania (remember him from the article on NYC speech?) conducted an experiment where one Philadelphian read aloud a random series of merrys and Murrays. Another Philadelphian marked down which one he heard. The results were completely random.

The long E also comes in for a change. It is pronounced as a short I. So the name of Philadelphia’s National Football Lig team is pronounced /iggles/, not Eagles. Colleague and fatigue are pronounced /collig/ and /fatig/, not /colleeg/ and /fateeg/ as they are elsewhere in the country.

Another feature, which Philly shares with the rest of the inland Northern-tier states, is the pronunciation of the short A. Before the N, M, TH, S, and F sounds, the short A has an /ih-uh/ sound. Thus, a Philadelphian doesn’t distinguish between the names Ann and Ian. They are both pronounce /ee-ann/. Note that this happens only before certain consonant sounds though. There are so many exceptions that only someone born and bred in Philly will consistently get the pronunciation right.

The long O is often preceded by a short E. So the expression “Yo Joe! Throw the ball!” is pronounced /Yeowuh Jeowuh! Threowuh the ball./

There are some consonant changes too. Like New York City speech, Philadelphians often reduce the T sound in the middle of words to a glottal stop, but only before M, N, and L sounds. So the Walt Whitman Bridge, which spans the Delaware River, is pronounced as the /wall women/ bridge.

And the initial S in words is often pronounced as an SH sound. Thus, to Philadelphian, /shity shtreets/ is not a comment on the sanitation department.

Pittsburgh Dialect
Pittsburgh is the major city in western Pennsylvania and it dominates the linguistic landscape in that part of the state. Pittsburgh is the starting point for the Midwestern pronunciation that stretches across much of the United States.

The chief pronunciation difference is in the /ou/ and /ow/ sounds, which are pronounced as /ah/. Therefore, downtown is pronounced /dahntahn/ and out is /aht/.

Pittsburghese is also known for dropping the verb to be with need or want. So the car doesn’t need to be washed, it needs washed. Another Pittsburgh usage is the phrase and that, usually clipped to n’at or en at, which is used as an intensifier. 

Pennsylvania German (Pennsylvania Dutch)
In addition to the two major dialectical centers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is also home to a dialect of German. It is spoken by the Amish, Mennonite, and descendants of other German immigrants in the south central region of the state. It is commonly called Pennsylvania Dutch, a term that is a bit of anachronism. The term Dutch, which is related to Deutsch, used to be a term that was applied to German speakers as well as speakers of the Dutch language. This dialect has also had an impact on how English is spoken in the same region, with particular words and syntax transferring between the two languages.

The Pennsylvania German dialect is rapidly fading. As late as the 1970s, it was spoken by 25% of the residents of Lehigh, Lancaster, Lebanon, and Berks counties, and understood by 65% of the residents. The numbers have declined sharply since, although the influence of the German on English is still seen clearly.

Some of the pronunciation differences are that /v/ is pronounced as /w/, so valley becomes /walley/. Other changes include /p/ shifting to /b/, pull is pronounced as /bull/, and /j/ becomes /ch/, jam becomes /cham/. Vowel changes include lengthening of stressed vowels.

The verb to make does not have just the usual English meanings, but it is also used as one would use machen in German. Hence, in Lancaster County one can make down the road (instead of go) or make the door shut (instead of close). Ain’t is often used in place of won’t, and ain’t can also serve to mark a question, as nicht wahr does in German or isn’t it in English, as in Nice day, ain’t? Other stock phrases include outen the light for “put out the light” and tie the dog loose for “untie the dog.”

Pennsylvania Words

All, adj., finished, dead. Penn. German

Barn burner, n., a wooden or kitchen match.

Berm, n., the shoulder of a road; western Penn., also Ohio, Indiana, and West Virginia.

Butterbread, n., bread spread with butter; Penn. German.

Cheesesteak, n., a type of sandwich, thin strips of steak, melted white cheese, onions, and peppers on an Italian roll; Philadelphia.

Diamond, n., a town or city square.

Dressing, n., gravy. Penn. German.

Drooth, n., drought; western Penn., from Scots and N. Irish dialect.

Flitch, n., bacon; surviving dialectical relic from Old English.

Funnel cake, n., fried dough made by pouring batter through a funnel into deep fat; Penn German.

Gumband, n., rubber band.

Hap, n., comforter, blanket; from Scots dialect.

Hisser, n., type of firecracker, a dud that is broken open and the powder lit.

Hoagie, n., a submarine sandwich; Philadelphia.

Hutch, n., a chest of drawers.

Jag, v., to jab, stab; also to jag off, to annoy, irritate, vex; and to jag around, to fool around.

Jagger, n., a thorn or burr.

Jumbo, n., bologna; western Penn.

Medial strip, n., median strip elsewhere in the US, grass strip running between the lanes of a divided highway; also found in southern NJ and Hawaii.

Neb, n., the nose, also v. to neb or to neb about, to pry into another’s affairs, adj. nebby, nosy, snoopy, and n. neb-nose, a snoop; also found in English dialect.

Pavement, n., sidewalk; Philadelphia.

Redd, v., to clean, to tidy; from Scots and northern English dialect.

Scrapple, n., scraps of pork, ground, mixed with cornmeal, molded into a loaf, sliced and then fried; Penn. German.

Yinz, n., equivalent of y’all and you guys, clipping of you ones; western Penn.

Book Review: AP Stylebook & Briefing on Media Law

1 December 2002

For years, the Associated Press wire service, or AP, has published its style manual, allowing journalists and writers from outside the organization to copy the AP’s style. The operative question is why would someone want to.

Unless you are an employee of the AP or writing for an organization that has adopted the AP style as its house style, this book is an uncertain guide. It is designed for daily, newspaper reporting, not for other types of writing. Its rules and conventions are arcane and Byzantine. For example, should one use periods when abbreviating the names of organizations? According to the stylebook, the answer is no, except when you should. AP uses periods with U.S. and U.N., but not with FBI, CIA, or AP.

Now style is, for the most part, a fairly arbitrary thing and consistency may be the hobgoblin of small minds, but consistency in writing style goes a long way. Some of the AP’s exceptions make good sense. There are sound reasons for not abbreviating the names of Alaska (Alas.?) or Utah, but what is wrong with Tex.? Why would someone choose to emulate the peculiarities of the AP style, especially when one is not engaged in newspaper journalism?

In some areas, the AP Stylebook falls down completely. The book offers nine paragraphs on transliteration of Arabic names. One would think that the AP would have sound advice to offer on this subject. But those nine paragraphs do not promulgate even a single standard. Their advice boils down to personal preference or established usage (without giving examples of what those established usages are).

It should be noted that this is not a grammar manual. It does include entries on some common grammatical errors, such as confusing lie and lay, but the book is primarily concerned with style, not grammar. It does have a section on punctuation that is worthwhile. But here inconsistency again reigns. The forward to the section lauds Strunk and White’s Elements of Style as “a bible” for writers, and then proceeds to violate the rules of punctuation that Strunk and White laid out many years ago. There is nothing wrong with AP’s punctuation style, but if it does not conform to Strunk and White it should not point out that book as a reference.

But not all is lost with the book. If one ignores its style advice, it is a rather handy reference book focusing on current events. The stylebook contains over 5,000 entries, many of which contain useful background facts on a wide range of subjects. If you need a quick overview of the structure and tenets of the Presbyterian Church, it is here. If you want to know about U.S. military titles and ranks, you can find it in this volume.

There are also some good hints on writing objectively and avoiding politically biased terms. The book, for example, recommends anti-abortion and abortion rights as opposed to pro-life and pro-choice.

The AP Stylebook contains several sub-sections. There is one on Internet guidelines that consists of a short glossary and three pages of search tips. The glossary is useful, but the search tips are far to simple to be of help to professional reporters and researchers. One would hope that any AP reporter is more skilled and would find the tips woefully simplistic. The sports and business sections provide useful glossaries and tips on reporting on these specialized subjects.

The most substantial of the subsections is the briefing on media law. This section is very useful for any professional writer. It is an excellent overview of U.S. law regarding libel, copyright, and First Amendment protections. Every professional writer in the United States should have a general understanding of the law in these regards, and the briefing here is an excellent one. It is no substitute for expert legal advice, but knowledge like this is essential in determining when one needs to consult a lawyer.

So in summary, if one is writing for an organization that uses the AP style, then this book is indispensable. If not (which is most of us), then it can be a handy general reference work. It wouldn’t be our first choice of books to fill a reference shelf, but if you have a collection of writing references, then this isn’t a bad buy.

Paperback; 420 pages; Perseus Publishing; ISBN: 0738207403; July 2, 2002.

Old English in LoTR

1 December 2002

This month, Peter Jackson’s film The Two Towers hits theaters in the United States. It is the second installment of Jackson’s dramatization of J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. It seems an opportune time to take a look at Tolkien’s use of language to set the tone and environment of Middle-earth, particularly his use of Old English.

Tolkien was not simply a writer of fantasy stories. He had a day job as a professor of philology at Merton College, Oxford. He was one of the world’s foremost experts on Old English and his 1936 essay, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, revolutionized the teaching and study of Anglo-Saxon literature, treating the poem as a work of literature for the first time, rather than just a historical artifact. The Middle-earth stories about hobbits and wizards were simply a hobby and a way to amuse his children.

One of the things that inspired Tolkien was what he perceived to be a lack of English-language mythology. The tales and stories of the ancient Britons were never written down and were wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons. Similarly, most of the tales of the Anglo-Saxons were lost with the Norman Conquest. Even Beowulf, although written in Old English, is about a Geatish hero, from what is now Sweden, who travels to what is now Denmark to fight the monster Grendel. In writing The Lord of the Rings, and the accompanying books, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion, Tolkien was attempting, in part, to create a mythology for England, and it made sense to use Old English associations as the means to link his tales with Britain.

Tolkien does this in several ways. He resurrects dead or little-used Old English words and uses them in his books, usually as names but also as terms for items of cultural significance, like smial and mathom. He also uses words that are not lost, but perhaps a bit archaic or evocative of older days in England, words like barrow or farthing. And in one case he even uses Old English in its entirety to represent the speech of one of the peoples of Middle-earth, the Rohirrim.

Geography of Middle-earth
Throughout his books, Tolkien uses Old English words, or words coined from Old English roots, as names for places, people, and things in Middle-earth. Even the name of his world itself, Middle-earth, is taken from the Old English midden-erd. As Tolkien wrote in a 1956 letter “Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. The name is the modern form (appearing in the 13th century and still in use) of midden-erd < middel-erd, an ancient name for the oikoumenē, the abiding place of Men, the objectively real world, in use specifically opposed to imaginary worlds (as Fairyland) or unseen worlds (as Heaven or Hell)." Tolkien is not the first modern writer to use the word. It has been in continual, if rare, use since Old English; Shakespeare, for example, uses middle earth in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Hawthorne uses it in The Marble Faun.

Tolkien takes his name for the hobbits’ homeland, The Shire, from scír, an Anglo-Saxon term for an administrative district. The word is still in general use, found chiefly as a general term for district or in place names, such as Yorkshire. The hobbits’ Shire is divided into four districts, which Tolkien calls Farthings. That word is from the Old English féorðing or féorða, meaning a fourth. In the real world, the word is best known for its use to denote a quarter of a monetary denomination or other measure, especially a quarter of a penny. One particular low, wet region in Eastfarthing is called the Marish, a word from the Anglo-Norman mareis, meaning swamp. Again, this is not a unique Tolkien usage; the word has been in occasional usage since the 14th century. Spenser uses it in the Faerie Queene, as does Tennyson in Dying Swan.

Old English terms are not just used by Tolkien to evoke pleasant images of days gone by in England. He also uses the Anglo-Saxon for the names of darker places. In The Lord of the Rings, the hero, a hobbit named Frodo, must journey to Mordor, land of Sauron, the Dark Lord, to destroy a magical ring. The name Mordor bears a striking resemblance to the Old English morðor, or murder, a similarity that could not have been lost on Tolkien. Also, another evil-doer, the wizard Saruman dwells in the fortress of Isengard, Old English for iron court, from the isen (iron) + gard (enclosure). At the center of Isengard is the tower of Orthanc, an Old English word meaning contrivance, skill, intelligence, or as Tolkien glosses it, cunning mind.

Placenames from the languages of some of Tolkien’s fantastic creatures also sometimes come from Old English. The underground Dwarfish city of Dwarrowdelf is from dweorh (dwarf) + gedelf (mine, pit). Derndingle, the meeting place of the giant Ents, means secret valley and is, in part, from Old English, dyrne (secret) + dingle (valley, of unknown origin)

Characters and Creatures of Middle-earth
Tolkien occasionally dips into Old English for the names of characters. He does this most often with the names of the people of Rohan (see The Language of Rohan, below), but with others as well. The protagonist of The Lord of the Rings, a hobbit named Frodo, takes his name from the Old English fród, meaning wise. Nor did Tolkien invent the name of the wizard Gandalf. That name appears throughout Norse mythology. The meaning, magical, gaunt, or wand elf, depends on which Germanic language you take it from. The evil wizard Saruman’s name is also from Old English, searu (cunning) + man, as is the name of another wizard, Radagast, from rad (skillful) + gast (spirit). The Hobbit has a character, a man who can change into a bear at will. His name is Beorn, an Old English word for warrior or hero. And the monstrous spider, Shelob, takes her name from she + the Old English lobbe (spider).

Other dark creatures go by Old English names. Most famous perhaps is orc. Tolkien adopted the word, which has been in occasional use in its current form since the late 16th century, as the name for the race of evil minions of the Dark Lord. The ultimate origin is somewhat vague, with several candidates presenting themselves. It may be related to Orca, the name of a genus of whales. The sense of a sea monster may have led to a more general usage. The term orcneas appears in Beowulf as a plural form of a type of monster. It may also be related to or influenced by the Latin Orcus, another name for Pluto, the god of the underworld (and the source of ogre).

Sometimes accompanying the orcs on their raids are wargs, or wolves, especially wild and vicious ones. Tolkien coined the word, basing it on the Old Norse vargr (wolf) and the Old English wearg (criminal, evil person).

Tolkien also borrows trolls from Scandinavian myth. Originally large and quite fearsome, over the centuries trolls shrunk and acquired a subterranean existence. The word was adopted into English in the 19th century. Tolkien restores the monster’s size and fearsomeness. Although a new adoption to the general English vocabulary, the word has a longer history in the dialect of the Shetland and Orkney Islands, where the term has survived (modern form: trow) as a relic of the Norse language formerly spoken there.

And in the first book of The Lord of the Rings, the hobbits encounter a barrow-wight, a supernatural being that guards the treasure in a barrow or grave. The term was actually coined in the 19th century by Andrew Lang, a writer about myths and legends. It is a compounding of barrow and wight, an Old English term for a living creature, especially a human. This sense long ago fell out of use. Wight also has had a sense of a supernatural being since c. 950. This second sense also fell out of general use, although writers, like Lang and Tolkien, have made occasional use of it over the centuries to evoke an archaic atmosphere.

A barrow is a mound of earth and stones erected over a grave. Originally from an Old English word for mountain, that sense has long passed out of the language, except in the names of particular hills. The term survived as a local term for a grave mound in the Southwest of England. It since has enjoyed a revival as an archeological term. Tolkien uses it the sense of a grave mound, especially those found just outside the borders of the Shire.

Tolkien, however, doesn’t restrict Old English to the names of evil races of creatures. Ents, kindly giant tree-creatures likely get their name from Eoten, an Old English word for giant. And the Woses, or wild men of the forest, are from the Old English wudewása, wudu (wood) + *wása (unknown)

Things of Middle-earth
Tolkien also resurrects some Old English words to give names to things found in Middle-earth. One such example is mathom. It is an Old English word, meaning a treasure or something valuable, that fell out of use in 13th century. Tolkien revived it with a new sense, that of a hobbit’s trinket or useless heirloom. Tolkien also revived mathom-house, which had meant a treasury in Old English, but in Tolkien’s world becomes a museum stuffed with old curiosities.

Another such hobbit word is smial. Tolkien uses it as a term for a hobbit’s hole, especially a large and grand one. It is based on the Old English smygel, or burrow. And living in the Great Smials is the Thain of the Shire. Thane is an Old English word for a warrior who is charged with ruling lands of the king. Tolkien uses it to denote the leader of the hobbits in the Shire.

Kingsfoil is the name of a plant with healing powers, coined by Tolkien. The original sense of foil, which is from the Old French, is the leaf of a plant. This sense has long been obsolete in English, giving way to the modern sense of metal hammered very thin, like a leaf. But Tolkien used the original sense when he names this plant, literally king’s leaf. He also uses the Old English athel, or noble, to form the Elvish name for the plant, athelas.

The Language of Rohan
Tolkien did more than simply resurrect Old English words as names of places and things in Middle-earth. He actually used the language to represent the language of one of the peoples of Middle-earth, the Rohirrim (the word Rohirrim is a Tolkien coinage, formed from roots in the fictional Elvish languages he created). Of course, most of the dialogue spoken by the people of Rohan is in modern English, but throughout the books Tolkien gives us snippets of Rohirric/Old English.

Rohan, in Tolkien’s tales, is a land of men, peopled by a fair-haired, Nordic-like race known for their excellence as horsemen. When it comes to representing their speech, Tolkien simply uses Old English. Throughout the explanatory material and the appendices to Lord of the Rings, Tolkien uses the conceit that he translated the material from ancient languages and that these are actual myths and legends, not stories of his own creation. In using Old English to represent Rohirric, Tolkien was choosing a language that had analogous relationship to modern English as Rohirric had to Hobbitish. He writes, “the language of Rohan I have accordingly made to resemble ancient English. The language of Rohan was related (more distantly) to the Common Speech, and (very closely) to the former tongue of the northern Hobbits, and was in comparison with the [Common Speech] archaic. In the Red Book it is noted in several places that when Hobbits heard the speech of Rohan they recognized many words and felt the language to be akin to their own, so that it seemed absurd to leave the recorded names and words of the Rohirrim in a wholly alien style.”

Tolkien goes on to note, “this linguistic procedure does not imply that the Rohirrim closely resembled the ancient English otherwise, in culture or art, in weapons or modes of warfare, except in a general way due to their circumstances: a simpler and more primitive people living in contact with a higher and more venerable culture, and occupying lands that had once been part of its domain.”

The Rohirrim refer to themselves as the Eorlingas, or in Old English “the people of Eorl,” Eorl being the first king of Rohan. Their name for hobbits is holbytla, or hole-builder, from the Old English hol (hole) + *byldan (to build).

The names of the people of Rohan, for one thing, are all derived from Old English words. The king of Rohan is Théoden, which means king in Old English. His nephew and heir is Éomer, a name that also appears in Beowulf and means renowned rider, and Théoden’s niece is Éowyn, or joyful rider. His counselor, who is secretly in league with the evil wizard Saruman is named Gríma, or mask. Gríma gives the wizard Gandalf the nickname, Láthspell, or lað (hateful) + spell (message), because Gandalf always seems to appear when things are at their darkest. And the Rohirrim give the hobbit Merry, who befriends Théoden, the name of Holdwine, from hold (loyal) + wine (friend).

The Rohirrim are renowned horsemen and they treat their horses almost as well as they do their children. The horses’ names in the books are also from Old English. The most famous, Shadowfax, is somewhat updated for the modern reader. It is from sceadu (dusky, shadowy) + feax (hair). Another horse is named Arod, the Old English word for swift or quick and another is Hasufel, or hasu (gray) + fell (skin). And the name for the royal horses of Rohan is Mearas, from the Old English mearh, or horse (and the etyma of the modern word mare). As warriors, the Rohirrim fight on horseback, organized in troops called éoreds, which is an Old English word for a mounted company or legion.

Place names in Rohan are also from Old English. The capital is Edoras, or the courts, and the king’s hall is Meduseld, or mead-hall. Districts in Rohan are Eastemnet and Westemnet, from the Old English emnet meaning plain or level ground. These two districts are also known as the wold, or open country, plain. It is from the Old English weald or forest (Cf. modern German Wald). The sense of forest dropped out of the English in the 15th century. The sense of open plain, stemming from the deforested plains of England, arose in the 13th century. This latter sense fell out of common use by 1600, although it remains in poetic use and in the names of places, e.g., the Cotswolds.

Others districts are Eastfold and Westfold, from folde or district, country. The entire kingdom is known as The Mark, which stems from three related, but distinct Old English roots, all carrying the sense of border, boundary, or land. The boundary sense has remained current in English, although the sense of land or country has become archaic. This latter sense is preserved, however, in its modern German cognate.

Tolkien gives us very few actual sentences in Rohirric/Old English. One that he does is a greeting Éomer gives to the king, Westu Théoden hál, This, substituting the appropriate name, is a traditional Old English greeting meaning Hail, Théoden, or literally “you be healthy, Théoden.” Although Tolkien modifies the spelling a bit, in Old English the first words would actually be “Waes thu.” Similarly, Éowyn bids good-bye to Théoden with Ferthu Théoden hál, or “farewell, Théoden,” literally “go with health, Théoden”

Other Old English words appear individually in the speech of characters, giving the reader a sense of their language and mythos. Éowyn calls the Lord of the Nazgul, a wraith-like servant of Sauron, the Dark Lord, a dwimmerlaik. The word, demerlayk, meaning magic or occult, appears in Middle English and is from the Old English roots dweomer (illusion, phantasm) + -lác (suffix of action or condition). Dweomer appears again in the Rohirric name for the Elvish forest of Lothlórien, Dwimordene, dweomer + denu (valley)

The Rohirrim call the fortress of Minas Tirith Mundburg, from the Old English mund (protection) + burð (fortified town). The flower that grows on their gravesites is Simbelmynë, from symble (always) + mynd (remembrance). And a series of ancient statues depicting a race of squat, primitive men are called the Púkel-men, from the Old English púcel (goblin) + men.

So, here we have an example of a writer who is philologically savvy and who uses this knowledge to good effect. Tolkien went further than simply reusing Old English words. He even invented several languages (or at least some basic grammar and a few hundred vocabulary words) for his creations to speak. But the Old English usages are especially effective. They seem vaguely familiar and evoke images of ages past, when at least the possibility of magical creatures seemed real.