atw: Re: Article: In Defense of Common English AND the FAN

The reviewer (and the writer, it would seem) promptly segues into an odd
little riff about the Dutch reclaiming land since the 13th century, blah,
blah, which has nothing to do with the origins of poppycock.

For anyone still wondering, it was coined in the US in the 19th century and
referred to religious zeal.

*Word History:* Today's silly word has nothing to do with poppies or
roosters. It comes from a Dutch dialect probably spoken in New York or
Pennsylvania in the 1830s. The word then was poppekak "doll poop" found only
in an idiomatic phrase referring to religious zeal, which I will not repeat
here. This compound noun is composed of poppe "baby, doll" + kak "poop".
Poppe "baby, doll" is a member of a family of words with similar meanings,
including English *puppet* and *puppy* and Late Latin puppa "doll".
*Kak*was borrowed by Dutch from Latin cacare "to poop", which came
from the same
word that gave Greek kakos "bad". This word turns up in English borrowings,
such as cacophony "discordant sound".

Sorry, not purposefully being pedantic, just thought the logic of the
paragraph (as referenced below, by Peter) was opaque.

FYI.
Carolyn

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Peter Martin <peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> Stuart Burnfield:
> You wrote:
> >
> http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=1200zq259py5hw6r0xs6h43x9jzd2gf3
>
> And interesting article / multiple book review.
>
> Oh hell.  At the risk of another Pullum thingy, dare I point out one
> interesting issue, given the title of the article, "In Defence of Common
> English"?
>
> The reviewer, Ben Yogada, says of one book:
>
> "> Hitchings ...... offers the odd and valuable fact that the seemingly
> euphemistic
> > "poppycock" is actually a direct translation of a vulgar expression that
> means "doll's
> > excrement".
> .....
> Then Yagoda adds later:
>
> > Hitchings cites the 1605 text A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, in
> Antiquities by
> > Richard Verstegan, who "vigorously promoted Anglo-Saxon words and
> customs, and
> > complained that his countrymen had lately borrowed so many terms from
> Latin, French and
> > other tongues that English was 'of itselfe no language at all, but the
> scum of many
> > languages.
> >
> > Well, it may be scum, but it's our scum.
>
> But if it were really our entirely our scum as Yagoda claims, why would he
> not use the common old term for translation of the original meaning of
> "poppycock" as "doll's shit",  which means the same, but is of Anglo-Saxon
> origin?    Methinks he's missed some of the point
> of the argument...     And can't actually use all of "our scum" in the
> journal publishing his article.
>
> Or maybe  there's scum and there are floating impurities ....
>
>
>
>
>
> -PeterM
> peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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