In Other Words

The crews of American heavy bombers now stationed in the British Isles have fraternized, of course, with the personnel of R.A.F. It was a case of love at first sight — but both sides experienced a little difficulty at first in savvying each other’s lingo. One American aviator, for instance, cited this example of the R.A.F.’s version of the King’s English:

‘Three ropey types, all sprogs, pranged a cheeseye on bumps and circuits. One bought it; the other two sent for a burton. The station-master took a dim view and tore them off a strip. They’d taken along shagbat wofficer, who was browned off. The queen bee was hopping mad.’

It took some time for the American to translate this cryptic report. Roughly, this is what it meant:

‘Three unpopular individuals, all brand new pilot officers, crashed a workout airplane while practicing circuits and landings. One was killed; the other two were reprimanded severely. The station commander disapproved strongly and roundly berated them. They had taken along with them a somewhat plain WAAF officer, who was bored. The station’s WAAF commander was very angry.’

— Queen’s University Journal, Sept. 29, 1944

| Language

The Vague Specific

In Collier’s in 1949, Richard B. Gehman identified a troubling feature of American language — the tendency to refer to specific things vaguely.

“Say, what about all those things in the front room?” his wife had asked him, supposing that he knew what she meant. “I didn’t,” Gehman wrote. “For all I knew, ‘those things’ could have been the furniture, books, rugs, magazines, lamps, or the remnants of a sandwich I’d been eating.”

Some more examples:

  • “Here,” my wife said, “you can take these. … Put them with those things behind the others.”
  • “Remember the girl from the place with the stuff? Well, she’s here.”
  • “The men came today.” (Gehman tried asking, “What did you tell them?”, but she only answered, “I told them to go ahead.”)
  • “Do you remember that time we were at the shore, and it rained?”
  • “When was it that we had the Coes over?”
  • “The woman’s here for the money.”
  • “What was the name of that couple we met the time we went to the Zeamers’?”
  • “What’s the name of that fellow who drives the truck?”

A neighbor appeared at Gehman’s door one day and asked his help in repairing a washing machine — his wife had said that the thing on its side was acting funny. “He sighed, and asked if I had anything to drink in the house.”

| Language

“A Victim of Irregularity”

Though no great catch, this man was caught,
And neighbors tell, I’m told,
That oft, with scratch, his face was scraught,
Till fearful yells he yold.

In sink of sadness almost sunk,
To quit all strife he strove —
And after he a think had thunk,
A happier life he love.

To steal a kiss, no more he stole;
To make a break, he broke;
To remedy the deal he’d dole,
A secret sneak he snoke.

Fate’s dice with crafty shake he shook;
As gamblers feel he felt;
But ere the final stake he stook
A bitter squeal he squelt.

Of earlier days, I think, he thought,
Ere Hymen’s bonds had bound —
Before his links were firmly lought —
When he by blond was blound.

A stroke for liberty he struck;
For in a fly he flew —
But though full many a joke he juck,
A secret cry he crew.

Then stings of conscience no more stung,
And so in peace he slept;
For, on the wings of Morpheus brung,
In Paradise he pept.

— George B. Moregood, Puck, Oct. 2, 1912

| Language · Poems

Couplet

From the postscript to a 1737 letter by Jonathan Swift — “Here is a rhyme; it is a satire on an inconstant lover.”

You are as faithless as a Carthaginian,
To love at once Kate, Nell, Doll, Martha, Jenny, Anne.

| Language · Literature · Poems

Ruly English

In 1957, the U.S. Patent Office wanted to design a computer that could track down earlier references to an idea submitted by an inventor. This is difficult, because patents are described in ordinary English, which uses many ambiguous and imprecise terms. The word glass, for instance, refers to a material, but also to any number of things made of that material, and even to objects that have nothing to do with glass, such as plastic eyeglasses and drinking glasses.

To solve this problem, engineer-lawyer Simon M. Newman planned a synthetic language called Ruly English that gave one and only one meaning to each word. In ordinary English the preposition through has at least 13 meanings; Newman proposed replacing each of them with a new Ruly term with a single meaning. The Ruly word howby, for example, means “mode of proximate cause.” It might replace the unruly terms by(take by force) or with (to kill with kindness) or through (to cure through surgery), but it always has the same basic sense.

Newman had to coin other terms to take account of differing points of view. A watch spring and a bridge girder are both flexible to some degree, but using the word flexible to describe both would leave a computer at a loss as to how they compare. Newman coined the Ruly word resilrig to cover the whole scale, from extreme flexibility to extreme rigidity, adding prefixes such as sli (slightly) and sub (substantially). So in Ruly English a bridge girder would be sliresilrig and a watch spring subresilrig. A computer that knew these terms would not be confused into thinking that a thin bridge girder was more flexible than a rigid watch spring.

“Humans are not expected to read or speak Ruly English,” noted Time in 1958. “To them, unruly English will always be more ruly.”

(Newman describes his plan briefly here. I don’t know how far he got.)

| Language · Technology

Boontling

Boonville, Calif., has a dwindling language all its own. “Boontling” grew up as a jargon among residents of Anderson Valley around the turn of the 20th century. It includes more than a thousand words and phrases but is dying out among the small population. A brief glossary:

applehead – a young girl
belhoon – a dollar
Bill Nunn – syrup
boshin’ – deer hunting
bucky walter – a pay telephone
can-kicky – angry
dicking – cheating at cards
forbes – a half dollar
glow worm – a lantern
greeley – a newspaper or reporter
harpin’ tidrick – a lengthy discussion
high pockets – a wealthy person
killing snake – working very hard
pearlin – light rain
skee – whiskey
tobe – tobacco
walter – a telephone
zeese – coffee

“A few of us try to keep our skills sharp on the teleef [telephone],” resident Bobby Glover told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2001. “We’re adding new words now that the old-timers are gone.”

Thanks to the efforts of a number of researchers, the jargon has been pretty well documented now — the Chronicle even managed to translate “Old Mother Hubbard”:

The old dame piked for the chigrel nook for gorms for her bahl belljeemer
The gorms had shied, the nook was strung, and the bahl belljeemer had neemer.

| Language

In a Word

affrontee
n. an insulted or offended person

In Gelett Burgess’ 1911 novel Find the Woman, a truck driver blocks the way of a parade organized by a society to ban profanity. He is addressed by Dr. Hopbottom, the society’s head:

See here, you slack-salted transubstantiated interdigital germarium, you rantipole sacrosciatic rock-barnacle you, if you give me any of your caprantipolene paragastrular megalopteric jacitation, I’ll make a lamellibranchiate gymnomixine parabolic lepidopteroid out of you! What diacritical right has a binominal oxypendactile advoutrous holoblastic rhizopod like you got with your trinoctial ustilaginous Westphalian holocaust blocking up the teleostean way for, anyway! If you give me any more of your lunarian, snortomaniac hyperbolic pylorectomy, I’ll skive you into a megalopteric diatomeriferous auxospore! You queasy Zoroastrian son of a helicopteric hypotrachelium, you, shut your logarithmic epicycloidal mouth! You let this monopolitan macrocosmic helciform procession go by and wait right here in the anagological street. And no more of your hedonistic primordial supervirescence, you rectangular quillet-eating, vice-presidential amoeboid, either!

The truck driver apologizes: “I see a plain, sea-faring man has no show with a doctor when it comes to exhibiting language in public. … If this here society what’s running this here procession can turn out graduates of the noble art of profanity like you are, I want to say this: Give me the pledge, and I’ll sign it.”

| Language