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World Records RSS Feeds697-1: Feedback, notes and comments - Curtain lecture Several readers pointed out that the same idea occurs in German: Gardinenpredigt, literally a curtain sermon. Robert Rovinsky found it defined in the German dictionary Duden as a stern night-time lecture, delivered by a housewife from behind the bed curtain to her drunken husband on his return from the pub. Hasso von Samson asked “Who copied the term from whom?” I suspect independent creation. Onpassing To judge from incoming comments, onpassing is fairly widespread and common in newspapers and broadcasting and goes back decades. Doug Fisher, a former AP news editor, noted, “AP had an internal message wire on which such usages were frequent, such as wx for weather, whether or Washington; onpass; upsend; overhead (meaning to use the phone, not the wire); sappest (meaning urgent, easier to type than the all-cap ASAP, I g...Feed Source: www.worldwidewords.org 697-2: Weird Words: Roister-doister -
This curious reduplicated noun turns up from time to time, almost always in British sources. Its meaning may be deduced from a couple of examples:
• He said he’d think nothing of quaffing ale all night and coming home at 5 a.m., smashing windows. He said he was a bit of a roister-doister, not like these white-livered people today who can’t hold their drink. [Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett, 1988.]
• I am due to talk to the veteran Hollywood roister-doister — a serially married, reformed and relapsed alcoholic, who was famously arrested, wild-haired and drooling, while driving under the influence of the date-rape drug GHB in 2002. [Evening Standard, 30 Jun. 2005.]
Students of English literature may recall a play by Nicolas Udall of about 1553 with the title Ralph Roister Doister, a comedy that featured the eponymous Ralph, a swaggering buffoon who thought he was irresistible to women. It features a letter to t... 697-3: Wordface -
Yet another ology A couple of newspaper reports this week quoted British government ministers uttering the word processology. They used it in derisive terms for journalists who, in the opinion of the speakers, devote more time to studying the way decisions are arrived at than in reporting the decisions themselves. Tony Blair's former official spokesman, Godric Smith, has been credited with introducing it into British political jargon soon after he was appointed in June 2001, though it has also been linked to his predecessor, Alastair Campbell.
Fast food term On Monday, the Guardian featured a short item on miniature cattle. The report said that animals shorter than 92cm tall are known as teacup cattle. They may be to the breeder who was interviewed, but all of the 90 examples from various publications in several languages I found with a Google search were less than 24 hours... 697-4: Questions and Answers: Bread-and-butter letter -
[Q] From Carolyn Clarke: “I was recently writing a short thank-you note to my hostess for a lovely weekend at her house, and thought of it as my bread-and-butter letter, as that’s what my mother had called it when I grew up in Canada in the 1950s. I have the impression that it was the recognised phrase for such a letter that is one’s plain duty as a guest to write. But why bread and butter? Because it’s always done, as putting bread and butter on the dinner table would have or may have been? I detest folk etymology and don’t want to be guilty of it myself. Was this phrase used in England?”
[A] It has indeed been used in the UK; it still is to some extent. It turns up from time to time in print, as here in a humorous... 697-5: Sic! -
• The July issue of the British magazine Juke Blues had an article about the soul record producer Willie Mitchell. Its first sentence read, “Born on 1 March 1928, in Ashland, Mississippi, the Mitchell family moved to Memphis, Tennessee when Willie was just two years old.” “What an odd family,” commented Reinhard Fey. “Parents and children born on the same day.”
• The website of the Courier-Mail of Brisbane on 26 July headlined a story thus: “Motorbike rider killed after hitting 170km/h before slamming into car and crashing through sound barrier.” Thanks to Colin Burt for spotting that. Sound must travel slowly in Brisbane.
• Chuck Crawford, in Louisville, Kentucky, could hardly believe his ears when a weight-loss-regimen company ran an advert on TV for its meals. A supposedly happy woman gushed: “The first mea... 697-6: Copyright and contact details -
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