Hanging Out with Pickwick

There's a strange feeling that you get when you're reading an old novel and find what you thought was a new phrase. Take, for example, hanging out. It's a phrase that I would have imagined was invented by surfers in the 1960s. So when you come across it in Dickens' Pickwick Papers from 1837 it feels decidedly odd:

Mr. Bob Sawyer, thrusting his forefinger between two of Mr. Pickwick's ribs, and thereby displaying his native drollery, and his knowledge of the anatomy of the human frame, at one and the same time, inquired—


'I say, old boy, where do you hang out?' Mr. Pickwick replied that he was at present suspended at the George and Vulture.

Not only was the phrase around, but it was familiar and annoying enough to be parodied. In fact, hang out comes from the idea of hanging out a sign to show that you're there for business. The same thing once struck me when I was reading Great Expectations. Wemmick is miserable and tells Pip:

"It's a bad job," said Wemmick, scratching his head, "and I assure you I haven't been so cut up for a long time."

Pickwick Papers also contains a character called Mr Phunky, which may be a forerunner of our more modern term. It was only eight years later, in 1845, that a writer called Samuel Naylor was able to pen the immortal line:

I do feel somewhat funky.

Anyway, here's a recording of an interview with Mr Pickwick.

The Esquivalient Cartographer

Many moons ago, I wondered whether there was a lexicographic equivalent of a cartographer's folly. Basically, mapmakers put tiny mistakes into their maps so that they can prove that a rival has simply copied from them. So I was wondering whether dictionaries did the same thing. And it turns out that they do.

The New Oxford American Dictionary apparently included the word esquivalience as just such a copyright trap. The entry ran:

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

Which is rather appropriate. The trick worked as well. Dictionary.com included the word and credited it to their paper-sister publication Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English. So the lexicographer's folly exists. Dictionary.com have since removed the word.

Mind you, I think esquivalient is rather a beautiful word, and intend to use it for every workshy lollygagger I come across.

Of course, in some ways, Blackadder got there first with his contrafibularities.

American readers should now recognise Hugh Laurie.

P.S. This article also has a nice bit about Mountweazels.

Apocolocyntosis

Last night I was sending a text message in which I happened to use the word apocolocyntosis. I was shocked to discover that apocolocyntosis isn't in my phone's dictionary, but even more shocked when the lady I was texting replied that she didn't know what apocolocyntosis meant. Barbarians and heathens! I live among barbarians and heathens.

Apocolocyntosis is, of course, the act of being turned into a pumpkin, or pumpkinification if you like. Now, I'll admit that it's not that useful a word when you're not talking about Cinderella; but, when you are, it's invaluable.

It's also a nice, single, concise word if, for example, a loved one were turned suddenly into a pumpkin and you had to call the emergency services.

The origin of the word has nothing to do with Cinderella. It was the title of a satire by Seneca the Younger. When Roman Emperors died they used to go through an apotheosis, which is when you become a god. So Seneca wrote a satire about how when Claudius died the gods wouldn't have him and he was instead sent to hell. Seneca describes Claudius' deathbed thus:

The last words [Claudius] was heard to speak in this world were these. When he had made a great noise with that end of him which talked easiest, he cried out, "Oh dear, oh dear! I think I have made a mess of myself." Whether he did or no, I cannot say, but certain it is he always did make a mess of everything.

At Claudius' funeral procession they chant this:
Mourn, mourn, pettifoggers, ye venal crew,
And you, minor poets, woe, woe is to you!
And you above all, who get rich quick
By the rattle of dice and the three card trick.

And as I'm a pettifogging minor poet who can actually do the three card trick, I find these lines unutterably tragic.

The Emperor Claudius

P.S. Just to be precise the name Apocolocyntosis was ascribed to Seneca's satire (probably) by Cassius Dio.

An Actual Oubliette

I had often heard and used the word oubliette, but until a couple of weeks ago I had never actually seen one.

An oubliette is a dungeon with an entrance (usually in the ceiling) but no exit. If you meet a chap you don't like, you can throw him into an oubliette and then forget about him entirely. The French for forget is oublier, hence the name.

Of course, despite the rumours, I don't own an actual dungeon, but the word is so useful as a metaphor that I use it regularly. I've even used the word on this blog here and here. The OED mentions that oubliette is almost always used figuratively. Then, on holiday, I was visiting the castle of Najac and saw this sign:

A ladre, by the way, is a miser. So the sign says Tower of the Misers, Ancient Oubliette. And next to the sign was a door (apologies for the quality of the photos, I had only my phone).

And here is the best photograph I could take of the interior of the metaphor.

It only remains to mention that I also visited Albi, which is the town after which the Albigensian Heresy was named, although it's better known as Catharism, which means purity. Catharism is very important in the history of buggery as I explained in this old post.

Essoinment

Whenever you read the minutes of a meeting, whether it's a board-meeting, an AGM or an orgy, you will find near the top the cumbersome phrase "apologies for absence", or in some particularly verbose cases "apologies for non-attendance". This can be done away with. You see, there is a single (and singularly useful) word for that: essoinment.

Essoinment is the act of essoining, and essoining is (OED):

To offer an excuse for the non-appearance of (a person) in court; to excuse for absence.

So all that the minutes of the meeting really need is Essoinments followed by a list of names.

Too many essoinments.

A ------ of iPhones

The other day my sister asked what the collective noun should be for iPhones (there was a pile of them on the table), and I couldn't think of one.

Just as there is a pride of lions and a murder of crows, there are all sorts of odd collective nouns hanging around the language - for example a nonethriving of jugglers.

Once*, several British Prime Ministers past and present were gathered together and somebody asked what the collective noun should be for such a meeting. Harold Macmillan suggested that they should be called a lack of principles.

Anyway, if anyone can come up with a collective noun for iPhones, please leave it in the comments. An imaginary prize will be awarded for the best.

Am I doing this right?

*The details of this story vary enormously but they all seem to agree that it was Macmillan who came up with the bon mot.

The Burrito Bureaucracy

A couple of weeks ago, I sat at my desk eating a burrito, without realising that there was any connection between the two.

Burrito is Spanish for little donkey. Apparently this is because a burrito looks like a donkey's ear (and as you'll know from a previous post donkeys' ears are so long that they spawned the phrase donkeys [y]ears).

Anyway, a burrito is a little burro and burro comes from Spanish burrico, and burrico comes from Latin burricus meaning horse, and burricus probably comes from burrus meaning reddish brown.

But that same Latin burrus went into French as bure meaning dark brown. The French, being a literate lot, started to cover their writing desks with dark brown cloth. These desks became known as bureaus. Soon the office that contained the desk came to be known as a bureau, and when the office and officialdom rule, you have a bureaucracy.

And hence the bureaucratic Flying Burrito Brothers.