[nasional_list] [ppiindia] Infamous English word is just an import
- From: "Ambon" <sea@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <"Undisclosed-Recipient:;"@freelists.org>
- Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 03:56:44 +0100
** Forum Nasional Indonesia PPI India Mailing List **
** Untuk bergabung dg Milis Nasional kunjungi:
** Situs Milis: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/ **
** Beasiswa dalam negeri dan luar negeri S1 S2 S3 dan post-doctoral
scholarship, kunjungi
http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com
**http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?eo20060115a1.htm
Infamous English word is just an import
By KEVIN RAFFERTY
Special to The Japan Times
HONG KONG -- Apart from Thatcherism and the creation of the modern game of
soccer, some cynics say that the major English contribution to modern
international life has been the widespread promulgation of the dreadful "F"
word.
Beloved of soccer hooligans, "F*** off" has become the common argot of insult
almost everywhere on the planet -- understood in places from China and Japan to
Latin America, even where English is not understood.
Horror of horrors, an important little book ("POSH: The Fascinating Stories We
Tell About the Words We Use," by Michael Quinion. Penguin: £7.99; 282 pages)
reveals that the four-letter word is not English at all and, worse yet for
professional Englishmen, is an import from German.
The popular assumption is that the expression is the archetypal Anglo-Saxon
four-letter word, similar to those used by Geoffrey Chaucer writing his tales
of medieval pilgrims' journeys. Some lexicographers also claim that it was used
as an acronym in the 15th and 16th centuries -- when married people had to get
permission from the king to procreate -- and stood for "Fornication Under
Consent of the King." An alternative acronym was as a space-saver for charges
of adultery written above people in the stocks, "For Unlawful Carnal
Knowledge."
Author Quinion flatly says that the word is not Anglo-Saxon, and gives a poem
of the late 15th century as its first written use. The writer was making fun of
Carmelite friars of Cambridge and declared, "Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov
xxkxzt pg ifmk." The latter part is code for "quia fvccant vvivys of heli." The
whole line said the friars are not in heaven because they are having sex with
the wives of Ely (a town close to Cambridge).
Quinion adds that "fvccant" looks like Latin but is a humorous fake. The
infamous word is of Germanic origin, related to the Middle Dutch "fokken,"
Norwegian "fukka," and Swedish "focka."
Acronyms became attached to the word only in the 1960s, he says, as the taboos
on printing it slowly declined. In 1948, the publishers of Norman Mailer's "The
Naked and the Dead" forced him to bowdlerize the word as "fug" -- leading
Dorothy Parker to remark when she met Mailer, "So you're the young man who
can't spell f***."
Quinion's book is an endless pleasure, taking words and phrases from "akimbo"
to "zzxjoanw" and explaining their origins. A lot of the time, he debunks the
popular myths about words. For example, his final entry "zzxjoanw" was used in
1903 in a music encyclopedia claiming it was a word for a Maori drum, and
subsequently appeared in other learned works. Too bad that the Maori language
has no letters z or x or j. It was a hoax.
The word "posh" is frequently cited as an acronym for the way that rich people
traveled by sea to India, standing for Port Out, Starboard Home, so that they
could catch the best breezes, especially when going through the Suez Canal on
Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company vessels. Quinion traces the origins
of the word back to the early 19th century to British street slang for money
and to the 1890s for a word meaning a dandy.
"OK," probably the most universal modern word, has lots of putative origins.
They include Choctaw-Chickasaw's "okah," meaning "it is indeed"; Greek "olla
kalla" ("all good"); Scottish "Och aye" ("yes, indeed"); Mandingo, "O ke"
("certainly"); Wolof, "waw kay" ("yes indeed"); or the claim that U.S.
President Andrew Jackson used to write "OK" as an abbreviation for "ole korrek"
on documents, an insult to an educated man.
All these theories are wrong, Quinion declares, saying that a U.S. president
barely remembered outside the United States was the source. Abbreviations were
in vogue in Boston in the late 1830s, leading to RTBS (Remains to be seen),
GTDHD (Give the Devil his due) and SP (Small potatoes). The practice spread to
New York where supporters of Martin Van Buren, the eighth president, started a
body called the OK Democratic Club in support of his re-election. The OK stood
for "Old Kinderhook," his nickname after his birthplace near Albany. Van Buren
lost the election and his connection with OK is widely forgotten.
Quinion offers surprises on expressions like "cheque" or "check" that made a
tortuous journey from Arabic through the chessboard: "female," "gringo,"
"kangaroo" and "kangaroo court," "love" (on the tennis court), "mind your Ps
and Qs," "niggardly" -- which predates the slave trade by several centuries --
"nincompoop," "wog" and "Yankee."
The book is actually a popular taster for Quinion's regular work. After a
distinguished career, including as a BBC reporter and producer -- how he must
cringe at the abuse of the English language by his latter-day BBC colleagues --
and adviser to the Oxford English Dictionary, he became the writer and editor
of the wonderful weekly e-mail newsletter and Web site World Wide Words, a free
treat every week. After 40 years struggling with the English language, he says
he has fought it to a draw. The only writing he has not done is sports.
In the current issue, he looks at a word that has been hardly used recently,
"stultiloquy," meaning foolish babbling, last used in literature by John
Steinbeck.
As a bonus, he records the words of the year 2005, as decided by the American
Dialect Society, a list that shows the inventiveness of American use of
English. The word of the year was "truthiness," referring to the concept of
stating facts or concepts one wishes or believes to be true rather than those
known to be true.
The word voted most useful was "podcast." The most creative was "whale tail,"
referring to the top of a thong or G-string on display above a skirt or slacks.
The word voted most likely to succeed was "sudoku," while the least likely to
succeed was "pope-squatting," meaning attempting to capture an e-mail address
in advance of the next pope.
The most outrageous word was "crotchfruit," a word that began to be used by
advocates of child-free public spaces, but has since gained popularity among
parents in jocular use.
As for the mindless F word, it is a pity that Quinion never took up soccer
reporting. If he had, he might have gotten it across to English soccer
hooligans that f*** was foreign. Mindless jingoists that they are, they would
have been quick to desist from its use and would have curtailed its contagious
spread. The downside is that the hooligans would probably have resorted to
cruder genuine Anglo-Saxon expressions.
Kevin Rafferty is a former managing editor of publications for the World Bank.
The Japan Times: Jan. 15, 2006
(C) All rights reserved
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
***************************************************************************
Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg
Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia
***************************************************************************
__________________________________________________________________________
Mohon Perhatian:
1. Harap tdk. memposting/reply yg menyinggung SARA (kecuali sbg otokritik)
2. Pesan yg akan direply harap dihapus, kecuali yg akan dikomentari.
3. Reading only, http://dear.to/ppi
4. Satu email perhari: ppiindia-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
5. No-email/web only: ppiindia-nomail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
6. kembali menerima email: ppiindia-normal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
ppiindia-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
** Forum Nasional Indonesia PPI India Mailing List **
** Untuk bergabung dg Milis Nasional kunjungi:
** Situs Milis: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/ **
** Beasiswa dalam negeri dan luar negeri S1 S2 S3 dan post-doctoral
scholarship, kunjungi
http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com **
Other related posts:
- » [nasional_list] [ppiindia] Infamous English word is just an import
