Esquivalence and Other Mountweazels

2 September 2005

The August 29th issue of The New Yorker contains an article by Henry Alford in the Talk of the Town section about esquivalience and other mountweazels. Esquivalience? Mountweazel? Surely those aren’t words to be found in a dictionary?

Well, it seems the first is in a dictionary and the second appears in an encyclopedia. The 2nd edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary defines the first as:

"esquivalience—n. the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities ... late 19th cent.; perhaps from the French esquiver, ‘dodge, slink away.’"

And Mountweazel appears in the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia has this to say about a certain Lillian Mountweazel:

"Mountweazel, Lillian Virginia, 1942-1973, American photographer, b. Bangs, Ohio. Turning from fountain design to photography in 1963, Mountweazel produced her celebrated portraits of the South Sierra Miwok in 1964. She was awarded government grants to make a series of photo-essays of unusual subject matter, including New York City buses, the cemeteries of Paris and rural American mailboxes. The last group was exhibited extensively abroad and published as Flags Up! (1972) Mountweazel died at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine."

That last bit about Combustibles magazine is the give away, for neither Mountweazel nor esquivalience exist outside those two publications. They are what is known in the publishing business as "copyright traps." On occasion, publishers of reference material will deliberately insert false information. If the information turns up in another source, the publisher knows that it was copied from them. They can then look more closely to determine if there are copyright violations in that or other entries. Erin McKean, editor-in-chief of the New Oxford American (and in full disclosure my editor for Word Myths) describes the practice as being "like tagging and releasing giant turtles" to see when and where they turn up again.

While this is a practice among some editors of reference works, copyright traps are generally of limited value as Fred Worth, author of a number of compilations of trivia, found out. According to www.snopes.com, in one of his works he inserted the "fact" that the first name of the TV detective Columbo was Philip. (Columbo’s first name was never mentioned on the show, becoming something of a running joke.) The game Trivial Pursuit, which was immensely popular in the 1980s, included this "fact." Worth sued the makers of the game, but lost. One cannot copyright facts, only the presentation of facts. The court ruled that a question and answer in a game was quite different from a trivia book. Simply repeating information that is part of a copyright trap is not, in and of itself, a copyright violation.

But esquivalience may have turned up one instance of, if not copyright violation, then sloppy research. According to the New Yorker article, the web site Dictionary.com included the word, but credited it Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary of English, which is published by the same group that produces Dictionary.com. Don’t bother to search Dictionary.com for the word now; it has been removed, although Onelook.com (a much superior dictionary web site) still has a ghost link to where the entry in Dictionary.com where the word once was.

Esquivalience is not the first "ghost word" to appear in a dictionary. Perhaps the most famous is dord, although that one was created by accident and not deliberately as a copyright trap. In the 1934 2nd edition of Webster’s New World Dictionary, dord appears as a word, defined as density. The entry should read "D or d," as it was intended as an abbreviation. But somewhere in the editorial process, someone omitted the spaces and gave it a pronunciation. The error was discovered in 1939 and printings of the dictionary from that date on corrected the error, but dord continued to appear in other, less well researched, dictionaries for years afterwards.

Esquivalience may be a ghost word, destined for oblivion, or at best to life as a lexicographic footnote, like dord. But there may be some hope for Mountweazel. In his New Yorker article, Alford uses the word as a noun meaning copyright trap, "six potential Mountweazels emerged." Keep your eyes open and perhaps others will be picking up the usage.

And in case you’re wondering, there are no mountweazels in Wordorigins.org. If one appears, it’s an error not a trap.

Barbarians

26 August 2005

This week we take a look at barbarians, or more specifically what words we have used for them. A barbarian is, of course, an uncivilized person, or perhaps more accurately someone from a civilization or culture other than our own. In English usage, the words barbarian and barbarous date to the 16th century. The obsolete barbar was in use earlier, dating to the 14th century. The English word is borrowed from the French and ultimately comes from Latin and Greek. The origin in Greek is probably echoic, the bar-bar as mimicry of what a foreign and unintelligible language sounded like. In ancient Greece, the word was used to refer to anyone from a non-Hellenic culture. In Roman usage, the word was used to mean someone who was neither Roman nor Greek, and in later usage to anyone from outside the empire.

Rome was, as we leaned in History class, subjected to several waves of barbarian invasions and Rome itself was sacked several times. This imagery has given rise to the phrase barbarians at the gates. I can only date this phrase to 1922. (If you know of earlier uses, please post them to the site’s discussion forum.)

So who were these barbarians who played such an important role in the fall of Rome?

Most of these were German tribes. The word German comes to us from Latin, where it was used to refer to any of a number of Teutonic peoples. It is not, however, from a known Teutonic root. The Teutonic tribes did not use this word for themselves. Instead, it is widely thought to be of Celtic origin, originally used by a Celtic people in northeastern Gaul (modern France) who were conquered by a Teutonic tribe and the name transferred to the conquerors. It is suggested that the Celtic root is gair, meaning neighbor, or gairm, battle-cry.

One of these Germanic invaders of Rome was the Vandals. They were a tribe that invaded Western Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries, eventually migrating to North Africa. Along the way, they sacked Rome in 455. The name Vandal is from the Latin name for the tribe. The word has been used since the 17th century to describe anyone who willfully destroys or defaces property.

Another tribe was the Goths. They invaded Western Europe in the 3rd through 5th centuries. English use of the tribal name dates to ca. 900. In 17th century, the meaning expanded to include anyone who behaves like a barbarian. Also in that century the adjective Gothic, previously restricted to denote things related to the barbarian tribe, expanded in meaning to include anything medieval, especially architecture. In the 19th century there was a revival of this architectural style and because of this, the term Gothic came to also be applied to certain genres of 19th century literature. More recently, starting in 1986, the term Goth has been used to describe a style of rock music and its fans, characterized by depressing lyrics, black clothing, and heavy eye makeup.

The Vikings were another group of Germanic invaders. Although they did not sack Rome, the Vikings were Scandinavian marauders of the 8th to 11th centuries who ravaged all the countries of Northern Europe, traveling as far as Moscow in the East and North America in the West. The word Viking is traditionally thought to be from the Old Norse vik, meaning creek, inlet, or bay, a reference to them coming from the sea. But the word is actually first found in Anglo-Frisian and is more likely from the Old English wic, meaning encampment or town. Like the Germans, outsiders applied the name to them. Viking was not common use in English in the centuries after the Viking invasions, undergoing a revival in English in the 19th century.

The Vikings are also called Norsemen. The adjective Norse is from a common Germanic root meaning north. The immediate source of the English word is either Dutch or Norwegian and dates to the 16th century. The term, however, did not originally refer to the Vikings, rather being used to refer to modern Norwegians. In the 19th century, the word began to be applied to the Vikings. Norse and Norsemen is also the root of the word Norman. The Normans being descended from Viking invaders of that region of France.

So if they weren’t called Vikings or Norsemen until the 19th century, what were they called? They were called Danes, a name that dates to 901. The Danes invaded and conquered much of northern and western England. It was only in more recent use when the term Dane became restricted to what is now known as Denmark. The area of England under Danish control was known as the Dane-law, a term in use since ca. 1050. And Danegeld, was an annual tax imposed to pay for protection against the Danes and sometimes to pay tribute to them to keep them from invading. Danegeld is not actually found until Norman times though, first appearing in the Domesday Book.

The Germans were not the only invaders of Western Europe as Rome faded. Various Asian peoples also made their way west to take their share of the spoils.

The Huns were an Asian nomadic people who invaded Europe in ca.375 and, under Atilla, ravaged Europe in the 5th century. The name has been in English use since sometime before 900. Since 1900, a Hun has been any person of brutal or violent character. The word is also associated with modern Germans, even though the Huns were not a Germanic people. This use comes from a quote made by Kaiser William II in 1900 during the siege of the Western legations in Beijing during the Boxer rebellion, "No quarter will be given, no prisoners will be taken. Let all who fall into your hands be at your mercy. Just as the Huns a thousand years ago, under the leadership of Attila gained a reputation in virtue of which they still live in historical tradition, so may the name of Germany become known in such a manner in China that no Chinaman will ever again even dare to look askance at a German." Once World War I started, Allied propagandists made the most of this quotation and the Germans became known as the Hun.

Less well known than the Huns, probably because they didn’t come as far west, were the Bulgars. They were a Central Asian tribe that invaded eastern Europe in the 2nd century, eventually settling in what is now Bulgaria in the 7th century.

A later Asian invader were the Mongols. The English word is taken from the French and ultimately comes from the Mongol name for themselves. The Mongol Empire, 1206-1368, established by Genghis Khan, stretched from Korea to Hungary.

Atomic

12 August 2005

This past week saw the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the events that brought an end to World War II. These two grim events introduced a large number of terms in the vocabularies of millions.

First among these are the names for the device itself. The term atomic bomb predates the device, being used as early as 1914 in H.G. Wells’s The World Set Free. Its shorter cousin A-bomb dates from 1945 as does the term the bomb. The thermonuclear hydrogen bomb comes a few years later in 1947 and H-bomb in 1950. The use of more technically accurate nuclear to denote fission and fusion processes and weapons also comes in 1945.

Much of the jargon of the scientists and engineers constructing the bombs also made its way into the vernacular. The Manhattan Project was the name of the secret project, so-called because finance office responsible for paying the bills was located in the Manhattan district offices of the Army Corps of Engineers. The individual bombs had their own names too. The first device, code-named Trinity, was detonated at Alamogordo, New Mexico on 16 July 1945. The scientists who built it simply called it the gadget. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 was called Little Boy. Three days later Fat Man, so-called because of its round shape, was dropped on Nagasaki. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan the following day and the Japanese surrendered on 15 August. Historians have long debated which event was more important in prompting the surrender, the dropping of the atomic bombs or the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria.

The power of atomic weapons also created a couple of terms to describe the unprecedented size of the explosions. A kiloton is the explosive power equivalent to one thousand tons of TNT. The term dates to 1950.  The Hiroshima bomb was somewhere between twelve and fifteen kilotons. The Nagasaki bomb was larger at somewhere just above twenty kilotons. (The unclassified yield of a modern US nuclear strategic warhead is 300 kilotons.) In 1952 the term megaton was coined to denote explosive power equivalent to one million tons of TNT.

While the explosive power, or blast, of an atomic weapon is its most spectacular feature, it is not the only effect. Radiation is a significant hazard. The term fall-out was coined in 1950 to describe the radioactive particles of dirt and dust that are sucked into the fireball and which eventually touch down, often many miles away from the detonation. The less well-known rain-out was coined in 1954 to denote fall-out that was prematurely flushed from the atmosphere by rain.

The effects of excessive radiation on the human body can be deadly. The term radiation sickness describing some of these effects has been around since 1924. The term radiation burn, seen on many of the survivors of the bombings, dates to 1949. Since radiation cannot be detected without instruments, various devices are needed to measure radiactivity. Radiation counter dates to 1947, as does radiation meter. Radiation monitor comes a bit later in 1951. The more familiar Geiger counter, named after physicist Hans Geiger, is older, dating to 1924.

But atomic weapons have other effects as well. Notable are the thermal effects, or heat and fire—both direct from the detonation and secondary from fires started by the heat of the blast. The term fire storm was known well before the atomic age, being used as a descriptive term for a great fire since the 16th century. Modern use of the term to refer to an all-consuming conflagration caused by bombs dates to 1945. Fire storms are not unique to atomic weapons; the incendiary bombings of Dresden and Tokyo also created fire storms.

Atomic weapons also have electromagnetic effects, but these weren’t fully appreciated early in the atomic age. It took until 1963 for the most famous of these to get its name, EMP or electromagnetic pulse, which can destroy electronic equipment many miles away.

The term ground zero was coined in 1946 to denote the point of impact or point directly underneath a nuclear explosion. The term critical mass dates to 1941.

The dawn of the atomic age did leave us at least one less-grim term. The bikini was named in 1947, after the site of a 1946 atomic test in the Pacific.

What Is This Phishing of Which You Speak?

29 July 2005

Reuters reported this week that a survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project asked online users about various internet buzzwords and jargon terms. It found that despite all the buzz, the words were not that familiar to most internet users.

Most users knew what spam was, but there the familiarity ended. Words like phishing (soliciting financial information about a person by pretending to be a bank or other trustworthy source), podcasting (audio downloads available over the internet), and RSS feed (a service that pushes blog entries to a user as soon as they are published).

Younger internet users fared better than older ones in recognizing the terms.

A Scandal of Errors

29 July 2005

The latest Washington scandal, that of presidential consigliere Karl Rove and vice presidential assistant Lewis "Scooter" Libby revealing the name of a C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame to the press in an attempt to discredit her husband, suffers from not having a catchy name. Some have suggested Plamegate, using the –gate suffix that has been affixed to many a scandal since the original Watergate. Others have suggested the more unwieldy Rove v. Plame, a play on the court case Roe v. Wade.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the essence of the scandal is that Rove, architect of President Bush’s electoral campaigns for governor of Texas and president of the United States, and Libby, told reporters that Plame worked for the C.I.A. either for revenge because her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was critical of the administration or to discredit Wilson by implying that he was given a C.I.A. assignment by his wife. There are questions about what laws, if any, were actually broken, and one reporter has been sent to jail for refusing to reveal her sources even though she never wrote a story about the case.

The scandal centers on that venerable Washington institution, the leak. A leak is the revelation of a secret. Leak has been used in this sense since 1859. Of course leaks are usually made to reporters, who seek to protect their sources from exposure. 31 states and the District of Columbia have shield laws (1998) that do not require journalists to reveal their sources to police or official investigators, but the federal government does not have one. This is why the reporter, Judith Miller of the New York Times, was sent to jail.

Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper has given us double secret background, the terms under which Rove spoke to him. Cooper used the term in an email to his editor that was made public during the investigation. Background is a journalism term used to describe a source who is not to be quoted. There is also deep background, meaning that the source is not even to be referred to anonymously, the information is only provided to the reporter as a guide for finding more leads or other sources. Cooper jocularly dubbed this double secret background, a play on the term double secret probation, which was used in the 1978 movie Animal House to refer to a punishment inflicted on a fraternity by the university.

Another word that has gotten a lot of use in this particular scandal is the verb to out, meaning to reveal a hidden identity, as in "Rove outed C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame." Most recognize the word in the sense of publicly revealing that someone is gay, but some question its use in this, more general, sense. Both these senses are cited in the Oxford English Dictionary as early as 1990. The specific sense relating to gays is a variant of the reflexive verb phrase to come out or to come out of the closet. This older term dates to 1968, but it’s not the oldest related sense. Out has been used to mean to reveal a secret since the late 14th century.

In response to the scandal, Republicans have released their legions of spin doctors (1984) who loyally repeat the daily talking points (1920), or message, on television, the radio, and to print reporters. The Democrats have their spin doctors and talking points too, but the Republicans are better at message discipline (1993).

Finally, there is the word scandal itself. It’s from the Latin scandalum, meaning a cause of offense and ultimately from the Greek meaning trap or snare. English usage dates to the 13th century and originally applied to something that brought discredit upon a clergyman or a church. The OED’s first citation in a secular and general sense is from Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. This current scandal is chock full of errors, on all sides, but is hardly a comedy.