world wide words- aug 31, 2013

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Subject:Sub jec t: World Wide Words -- 31 Aug 13

From:From: Michael Quinion ([email protected])

To :To: [email protected];

Date:Date: Thursday, August 29, 2013 6:02 PM

WORLD WIDE WORDS NEWSLETTERIssue 847: Saturday 31 August 2013

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Contents

1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.

2. Cantrev.

3. Not a happy bunny.

4. Sic!

5. Useful information.

1. Feedback, Notes and Comments

Whifflers and whiffling Following last weeks piece, readers noted some of the

many situations in which these agreeable words appeared. Several pointed out that

Id not mentioned perhaps the most famous use ofthe word in literature, in Lewis

Carrolls poem from Through the Looking Glass, in which you may recall that

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

Lots of others mentioned the game of Whiffle Ball, likely named for the noise of the

air passing through the holes in the ball. Others noted its appearance in Dorothy L

Sayerss detective storyMurder Must Advertise of 1933, in which Lord Peter

Wimsey, posing as Death Bredon, becomes deeply involved in the advertisingcampaign for a brand of cigarettes called Whifflets, which must surely be a sly

reference by Sayers to an old sense ofwhiffler for a smoker of tobacco:

It was in that moment, and while Chief-Inspector Parker was arguing over

the line with the office telephonist, that Mr. Death Bredon conceived that

magnificent idea that everybody remembers and talks about today the

scheme that achieved renown as Whiffling Round Britain the scheme

Betty Sunday, September 1, 2013 9:03:36 PM ET 00:22:41:30:b6:41
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/uucw.htmhttp://www.worldwidewords.org/http://www.worldwidewords.org/feedback.phphttp://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/http://www.worldwidewords.org/php/bin/surprise.phphttp://www.worldwidewords.org/php/bin/surprise.phphttp://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/http://www.worldwidewords.org/feedback.phphttp://www.worldwidewords.org/http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/uucw.htm


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that sent up the sales of Whifflets by five hundred per cent in three months

and brought so much prosperity to British Hotel-keepers and Road and

Rail Transport.

Also in detective fiction, Bruce Beatie and Ed Matthews tell us that a more directly

relevant mention is in Ngaio Marshs Off With His Head(Death of a Foolin the US),

in which one of the characters is the whiffler in a traditional Morris dance, who

clears a space for the performance:Through the archway came a blackamoor with a sword. He had bells on

his legs and wore white trousers with a kind of kilt over them. His face was

perfectly black and a dark cap was on his head. He leapt and pranced and

jingled, making complete turns as he did so and whiffling his sword so

that it sang in the cold air.

Bill Marsano was one of many who pointed out that whiffling-waffling, as it was

described in the piece, thrives in the U.S. under the name ofbaton-twirling, which

is almost exclusively the province of pretty and lightly-clad young women who

typically perform at parades, football games, etc. In the southern US it is a very

competitive activity, not to say sport.

Yet another American usage was reported by Jim Tang: This explains that most

anachronistic of baseball terms, he whiffed. Bad enough that you missed the ball

three times to strike out, but to have it equated with a term for a light puff of air from

your swings? That is just piling it on. Which, of course, is the point, because the

insult game was invented by baseball.

Crack shot This, likewise, produced many comments, especially about other

senses of the word, such as get cracking, to get a move on, and to take a crack at, to

attempt something. The latter seems, from evidence in the Oxford English

Dictionary, to have evolved from musketry (being the noise of the gun) and toparallel take a shot at. Awisecrack is from the Scots sense of talk or discussion, as is

crack for a cutting or insulting remark.

John Nightingale introduced me to the odd US term crack varnish for the very

fastest and best passenger train. The second part of this term baffled me until I

learned from theDictionary of American Regional English that from the 1880s

varnished car was a slightly sarcastic railwaymens slang term for a passenger

vehicle, as such accommodation at the time contained much highly varnished wood,

in contrast to utilitarian freight and staff wagons. Over time this became abbreviated

to varnish for the car and then for the whole train. Acrack varnish, of course, wasthe very best of its type.

2. Cantrev

This word popped up in a book of short stories Ive just finished reading:

So, the land there is thickly forested to the north and the forest grows even

more thickly and densely to the south. This southern cantrev of forest is soBetty Sunday, September 1, 2013 9:03:36 PM ET 00:22:41:30:b6:41


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very dense, indeed, that there is no other place in the world with trees of

such height or magnificence or profusion.

Adam Robots, by Adam Roberts, 2013.

A cantrev the word has been spelled in numerous ways, including cantrefand

canthrif turns out upon enquiry to have been a medieval legal division of Wales

(from the Welsh cant, a hundred, plus tref, a town or place). Its closely similar in

sense to the English hundred, a division of a county or shire for administrativepurposes. In fact, in medieval England yet another form of the word, cantred, was

used almost synonymously with hundred.

The word has long had only historical interest. But it has enjoyed a minor revival in

SF and fantasy as in Lloyd AlexandersPrydain Chronicles as an unfamiliar

term with which to communicate a sense of otherness. The revival is most probably

due to modern interest in the medieval Welsh epic The Mabinogion, in which

cantrev often appears.

3. Not a happy bunny

Q From John Gray: Why did not a happy bunny come into existence? Surelybunnies are largely devoid of facial expression, so determining their state of

happiness or otherwise is not readily possible. Online searches seem to say nothing

about the origin of the phrase.

A People have been writing about this in a mildly puzzled way at least since JohnMullan included it as hisPhrase of the Week in The Guardian during November

2002, saying it was now everywhere and that It started being common four or five

years ago, especially as an understated description of a persons displeasure.The earliest example I know of appeared inPunch magazine in November 1989 and I

would have said that it had already peaked in popularity by 2002. However, a British

newspaper archive shows that it has been used even more in the past two or three

years. It long ago became a catchphrase and a clich, mostly in Britain. It has also

spawned its inverse, though it is still much less common to learn that somebody is a

happy bunny than an unhappy one.

Theres a good reason for nobody online being able to say anything useful about its

antecedents no expert seems to have the slightest idea about its origin and most

writers on contemporary slang have ignored it. Nigel Rees, presenter of the BBCradio quiz programme Quote ... Unquote, has for many years included it as question

1368 in his list of unsolved phrase origins. This shows no signs of being resolved any

time soon.

It may be a disparaging comment drawn from childrens literature, in which fluffy

bunny rabbits are usually happily hopping about. To refer to a persons distress by

saying he isnt a happy bunny is to infantilise his emotions. But people sometimes



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use it about themselves, when it becomes self-deprecating. There may be a link to

British television advertisements for the Duracell Bunny (matched in the US by ones

for the Energizer Bunny). This is a pink rabbit, always with a fixed grin and originally

endlessly beating a drum. The adverts have been around for some decades (they

began in 1973), so its not an implausible origin.

Other than that, all Ive been able to do is add another mystified comment to the

many that precede me. Add an appropriate bunny-related punchline if you like. Imrunning out of energy.

4. Sic!

Taking inclusive language a bit too far, commented John Martin on an item in

The Guardian on 23 August, which quoted the TechCrunch website on Microsofts

CEO, Steve Ballmer: If his or her successor doesnt like the One Microsoft vision,

hell have to do another reorganization. TechCrunch has corrected its version.

Tereza Shortall headed her contribution Every womans nightmare! having read

this advertising blurb on the Harrods website: Tailored in beautiful virgin wool,these trousers from Alexander McQueen will instantly become the most exquisite

staple in your all-rear-round wardrobe.

Staying with Harrods, Pat Beattie was in the famous Knightsbridge store and

spotted that the floor directory, expensively inscribed on a marble wall, included the

entry, Lower Ground, Menswear, Fashion Accessories, Gifts and Stationary.

In theNew York Daily News of 18 August, Tanya Thomas found a report

describing the trial of Jodi Arias for killing her boyfriend, Travis Alexander: Arias

claimed intruders broke into the house and gave interviews to Inside Edition and

48 Hours Mystery.

Tony Willett found this in a list of spa treatments in the brochure of The Academy

at the City of Bath College: Relax in our sauna and steam room, distress in our hot

tub and drift away in our dry flotation bed.

5. Useful information

About this newsletter World Wide Words is written, edited and published in

the UK by Michael Quinion. ISSN 1470-1448. Copyediting and advice are provided

by Julane Marx in the US and Robert Waterhouse in the UK. The linked website ishttp://www.worldwidewords.org.

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