15 November 2003

Idiomatic clothing from top to bottom

English as a language has always taken everyday actions and turned them into idioms for more complicated ideas. Few things are more everyday than clothing – we seldom go through a day without getting dressed. So it is not unexpected that many idioms involve what we wear. Here is a small (threadbare, even) sample that won't wear you out.

'Tip my hat' – you do this for a person or idea that you respect. For example 'I don't like Fred, but I tip my hat to him for standing up to that bully.'
'Get collared' – caught by the authorities. For example 'She was collared for shoplifting when a frozen chicken dropped out from under her dress.'
'Lose your shirt' – Lose all your money. For example 'He lost his shirt on a wild bet at the horse races.' (You can also 'keep your shirt on' by not losing your temper, and 'get shirty' by becoming irritable.)
'Belt' – As a noun it keeps your trousers up. As a verb it's an idiom for 'To hit' or simply do something energetically. For example ''Janet belted John when he belted out songs too loudly on his guitar.'
'To wear the trousers' – To be the one who takes charge in a relationship. 'Janet wears the trousers in that household. John does as he is told.'
'The shoe is on the other foot' The situation has completely changed around. 'John used to take orders from Janet, but since he inherited a million pounds the shoe has been on the other foot.'

15 September 2023

Clitics within Malaphors

"On YouTube last week this $%^!!%* individual was manipulating, cheating and deceiving. His Make Munny Fasta scheme would make millions – for himself while bankrupting others. His idea that you shouldn't keep your golden egg under the mattress was clearly stolen from the July 2023 edition of Money Makers Magazine."

Perspicacious readers will have noted that this is a language blog and not a financial column, and from this they will have (correctly) deduced that the above paragraph is an illustration of some grammatical point. More particularly the text demonstrates respectively the use of Bicapitalization, Grawlix, Diazeugma, Allegro formation, Dirimens copulatio, and a Clitic within a Malaphor. We finish with a Mountweazel.

These excellent words deserve to be brought more into public view, so feel free to drop them into conversation at dinner parties or – in the case of 'diazeugma' on to the double world score in Scrabble.

So, the definitions: Bicapitalization is straightforward enough – it's when a word contains more than one capital letter. The wonderfully evocative 'Grawlix' is where punctuation marks are substituted for profanities. When a series of verbs or participles are linked to the same subject we have Diazeuguma, while Allegro formations - beloved of brand creators – deliberately misspell words.

Dirimens copulatio balances two differing ideas, while a malaphor is a metaphor gone wrong. The example given here contained the clitic 'n't' which is a letter formation with it's own meaning that can't stand alone.

To foil plagiarists of this article I could have included a pseudoword such as 'c'monoffit'. That way, if anyone else uses this made-up word (with clitic!) I know they're cheating. Such fake references, sometimes used in academic articles maps and dictionaries, are called Mountweazels.

15 July 2023

Second-hand Spanish

'English' goes the famous quip 'does not borrow words from other languages. It lures those languages down dark alleyways and mugs them'.

Sometimes the words that English has, ahem, acquired from other languages did not come from those languages in the first place. After all, it's not just the English who, when short of a handy word, look around for the nearest language they can take it from. Some 'English' words were second-hand when we got them.

A good place to start looking for such words is Spanish, because the Spanish, like the English have a long colonial history, especially in the Americas. (Which is why the Spanish word for 'snowy' became the state of Nevada.) Many modern English words were originally spoken in Nahuatl, or Quechua, these being native languages of Mexico and the Andean region respectively.


Europeans called it the New World because their discovery of the western hemisphere brought so many new foods and animals to their attention. Often they used the words for these things taken from peoples for whom it had been quite an old world for a long time. So, for example we get 'avocado' from the Spanish 'aguacate' which comes from the Nahuatl 'ahuacatl' and quinoa from the Spanish 'quinua' from the Quechua 'kinwa'. With animals we have the puma from Quechua and the ocelot from Nahuatl.

Other words come to us via Spanish from the Caribbean – including 'Caribbean' from the Spanish work for the Caribe, the peoples native to that region. This is the origin of 'barbecue', and 'cannibal' for the people who used those barbecues for unsavoury purposes. Elsewhere in South America the Spanish added to English vocabulary by adapting native words which became things like 'cigar', 'tomato' ,'quinoa', 'pita' and 'poncho'.

Of course, the Spanish experience was not limited to South America. They gave us 'matador' from Arabic ('mata' – to kill) and 'Adobe' from the same source. My favourite is 'flamenco', which comes from distinctly non-tropical Flanders. The Spanish thought that the Roma people came from there, and the flamenco was originally a 'gypsy dance'.

15 May 2023

He said ____ly

Fred stopped in the doorway. 'Can I come in?' he asked nervously.
Janet Smith, the librarian said reassuringly. 'Of course you can.'
'Take a seat' she added invitingly.

How does this extract from a student essay differ from professional writing? The first sign is adverb-itis. If a text is properly written there should be no need to explain the speaker's manner every time, or even most times. Likewise, if something appears within quotes then the readers already know that it has been said. You don't need to tell them.

Now let's rewrite this piece.
Fred stopped in the doorway. 'C-can I come in?'
The librarian looked up. 'Of course you can. Take a seat.'

Firstly, if Fred has been properly introduced, we should already know how he feels about entering the library. So just a small stutter is enough to indicate nervousness. Secondly at this point Fred would not know the name of the librarian, so there's no need to commit another amateur writer's error - that of unnecessarily introducing people. If Fred sees a librarian and we are seeing things from his perspective, all we need to know is that.

When the librarian says 'Of course you can' we assume this is said reassuringly unless the writer tells us otherwise. Likewise 'Take a seat' is an invitation, so we already know that it is said as such.

Note also that the first example of even this brief dialogue is a third longer than the second piece. Good writing is not necessarily brief, but there are no superfluous words. A good writer edits these out, whether in a classic novel or in an email to a friend. Whether professionals or not, we should all strive to follow the example of a writer who apologised to a friend 'Sorry this letter is so long. I didn't have time to make it shorter.'

15 March 2023

Unusual etymologies

English is full of words which evolved from other meanings. To demonstrate this here are three examples.

Dumbbells. Everyone who has been to a gym has probably picked up one of these sets of weights. But why are they 'bells' and what makes them 'dumb'? Yet the reason is actually pretty logical. While the modern dumbbell has a circular weight at each end of a short metal bar, two hundred years ago, the design was slightly different. Rather than a circular shape, the weight was conical with the narrow part attached to the bar. This made it look rather like a hand-bell, except of course it did not ring when waved around. Being silent, this exercise 'bell' was a dumb bell, since 'dumb' literally means 'unable to speak'.

Potholes. Everyone has probably cursed these holes in the road that make a journey uncomfortable and wreak havoc with a car's suspension. Yet the problem goes back to the days before tarmacadam, when roads were surfaced with clay. This clay was irresistible for potters who were too poor or too thrifty to find their own clay. Instead they dug the material for their pots from the road – leaving behind 'pot holes'.

Shambles. Today this means any disorganized mess. Yet go back to the Middle Ages and you could go shopping at a shambles. This is because shambles were butchers stalls specializing in non-meat parts of an animal. Instead, kidneys, livers, hearts and entrails were spread over the stall waiting for the discerning customer. Because it was almost impossible to arrange that lot tidily, the goods on sale looked like, well, a shambles.