Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. If we like it, your tweet will appear on our blog.
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Welcome to this week’s Language Blog Roundup, in which we bring you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture.
We don’t know about you, but we’ve gone into Downton Abbey-withdrawal since Sunday’s season finale. Luckily, to tide us over till next season, we have pieces from Ben Zimmer and Ben Schmidt on Downton Abbey anachronisms (which got a mention on SNL’s Weekend Update, congrats!), and our own Word Soup post on the words and phrases the show (mostly) got right.
In sports, we were driven to the brink of Linsanity – near-insane enthusiasm over Taiwanese-American basketball player, Jeremy Lin – an early contender, says American Dialect Society, for the 2012 word of the year. The Linsanity continued as Ben Zimmer discussed the linguistics of Linsanity; Victor Mair bemoaned the questionable Mandarin equivalent of the popular portmanteau; and Lin himself filed an application for the Linsanity trademark. Meanwhile, ESPN fired the writer who went with a poorly chosen headline regarding Lin. Pro-tip: don’t use “chink in the armor” in reference to someone of Asian descent. More tips if you need them.
In politics, Mr. Zimmer delved into the meh-ness and fail-ness of a recent GOP debate, while Johnson looked at what’s wrong with Democrat Party. At Language Log, Mark Liberman looked at Rick Santorum’s radical mis-speaking about President Obama; a Republican slogan that has Communist roots; and a grammar-based conspiracy. Geoffrey Pullum parsed sing, sang, and sung, and noted a novel illness, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, better known as a temper tantrum.
At Visual Thesaurus, Mark Peters explored the diversity of American English in his review of Richard Bailey’s Speaking American. At Macmillan Dictionary Blog, Michael Rundell told us more about how words get into the dictionary (with a nod to Wordnik, thanks!). John McIntyre suggested that more punctuation doesn’t improve your writing, and peeved about grammar peeves, while Stan Carey wondered where the grammar was in so-called “common grammar mistakes.”
At Lingua Franca, Ben Yagoda confessed that between you and I isn’t necessarily a grammar mistake, and Lucy Ferriss pondered illegitimacy. Meanwhile, the Angry Sub-Editor groused about crappy portmanteaus (or crapmanteaux), and Kory Stamper begged us to take her life, please. Sesquiotica told us about grackle; some plump words; the etymology of carnival; and all the hubbub (bub). The OUP Blog gave us the origin of the word dude, while the Virtual Linguist discussed the language of childbirth.
Fritinancy got her X on, and picked for words of the week, uppertendom, “the upper classes; the richest people in a city”; and nomophobia, “fear of being without a cellphone.” Erin McKean’s words of the week included echo boomers, “so-called because their parents were baby boomers”; devore, “a silk/rayon velvet on which a design is ‘printed’ using a heat-activated chemical”; and park and bark, “simply standing on stage and belting out the vocal line.”
Word Spy spotted altmetrics, “tools used to assess the impact of scholarly articles based on alternative online measures such as bookmarks, links, blog posts, and tweets”; peak people, “a time when the world’s population reaches a maximum”; engaged workaholic, “a person who works compulsively because he or she loves their job”; billion laughs, “an online attack that attempts to disable a website by sending a specially formatted sequence of characters such as ‘lol’ and ‘ha’.” Meanwhile, a group of German language experts voted shitstorm as the best Anglicism of 2011.
Superlinguo discussed flattery, respect, and kin terminology in Nepali and English. Dialect Blog examined inner city dialects, the c-word, hate speech, and ‘The Jersey Shore’ and Jersey accents (not necessarily the same thing). We learned that goats change their accents depending on social surroundings, and that inner speech during silent reading reflects the reader’s regional accent. Meanwhile, pupils at a school in Sheffield, England have been banned from using slang.
In dictionary news, Joan Houston Hall and Erin McKean spoke with KQED about The Dictionary of American Regional English, which was also profiled in the Wall Street Journal. In library news, we loved The Little Free Library, as well as these pop-up libraries a New Yorker created out of old pay phones, perhaps inspired by the “adopt a phone kiosk” library program in Somerset, England a few years ago. Finally, we loved this illustrated lesson in linguistics, and this list of titles in search of a script from Stanley Kubrick.
That’s it for this week!
With the Academy Awards just a few days away, we’ve had movies and movie words on the mind. What better way to celebrate than with this special Word Soup dedicated to film slang and lingo?
Abby Singer
“‘Abby Singer’ is director slang for the ‘next to the last shot,’ and takes its name from an assistant director, according to DGA Magazine.”
Joyce Wadler, “Where’s John Ford When You Need Him?” The New York Times, February 2, 2005
The Abby Singer was named for Abner E. “Abby” Singer, a production manager and assistant director. When asked how many shots were left at the end of the day, Singer would always answer, “This, and one more.”
Alan Smithee
“’Alan Smithee‘ is a phony name that turns up whenever a director is so embarrassed by what’s been done to his movie that he takes his name off it.”
John Hartl, “Credit Alan Smithee for ‘Hellraiser’ Fiasco,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 12, 1996
Alan Smithee – which some say is an anagram for “the alias men” – was first used for the 1969 film Death of a Gunfighter.
biopic
“A spot for Listerine, sold by Johnson & Johnson, urged viewers to ‘fight biofilm.’ That may have generated a lot of head-scratching in Hollywood, where a movie about a real person is called a ‘biopic.’”
Stuart Elliott, “Commercials at the Oscars Play It Safe and Play It Again,” The New York Times, February 28, 2011
A biopic, a blend of biography and picture, is a “a film or television biography, often with fictionalized episodes.” The word seems to have been coined by writers at Variety magazine.
blaxploitation
“For every heroine in the canon of blaxploitation movies — often filmed with her breasts popping out if her shirt at random intervals for no good reason at all — Pam Grier redeems every shirtless character she ever played in this film about a double-cross gone awry.”
Jim Izrael, “Girls, Guns and Grudges,” NPR: Tell Me More, August 28, 2011
Blaxploitation films are “a genre of American film of the 1970s featuring African-American actors in lead roles and often having antiestablishment plots, frequently criticized for stereotypical characterization and glorification of violence.” Blaxploitation is a blend of black and exploitation.
Bollywood
“The influence of Bollywood suffuses every scene of ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’ as well as Hollywood-financed diversions as various as ‘Moulin Rouge’ and ‘You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.’”
Michael Phillips, “Bollywood hybrid fails to fly,” Chicago Tribune, January 16, 2009
Bollywood refers to “the Indian film industry located in Mumbai,” and is a blend Bombay, the former name of Mumbai, and Hollywood. The word Bollywood, which may have originated in the 1970s, was inspired by an earlier blend, Tollywood, “referring to the Bengali film industry based in Tollygunge,” and dating back to 1932.
box office poison
“Nation-wide attention was directed to a statement signed by the Independent Theater Owners’ Association, which came right out in print and characterized Mae West, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Kay Francis and Marlene Diectrich ‘as box office poison.’”
Paul Harrison, “‘Box Office Poison’ Blast Fails to Disturb Movie Moguls Trying to Cut Stars’ Salaries,” The Pittsburgh Press, May 10, 1938
The infamous “box office poison” letter was written by Harry Brandt, president of the Independent Theater Owners’ Association. Brandt tempered his statement by saying that the actors’ “dramatic ability is unquestioned but [their] box-office draw is nil.”
chew the scenery
“Combs also has a ball as over-the-top Sergio, not so much chewing the scenery as swallowing it whole.”
Martin Morrow, “Review: Get Him to the Greek,” CBC News, June 4, 2010
To chew the scenery means to overact. According to World Wide Words, the phrase is sometimes meant as a compliment, “suggesting an actor who is energetic and spirited,” and may have originated around 1891, referring first to stage actors, “which is only reasonable. . .since scenery that is close enough to you that you can chew on it, even figuratively, is usually found only on the stage.”
chick flick
“At the very least, the film [The Devil Wears Prada] is laboriously designed as a chick flick in which the male species is clearly subordinated to the female.”
“The Devil Is a Dominatrix, But Streep’s No Real Surprise,” New York Observer, July 17, 2006
A chick flick is “usually about romances, which is popular with females and comparatively unpopular with males.” Chick is slang for a girl or young woman, and first recorded in 1927, while flick is slang for a movie, first attested from 1926 as a back formation of flicker, from the flickering appearance of film at the time.
The term chick flick seems to have originated in the early 1990s, referring to films such as Thelma & Louise and Sleepless in Seattle.
chopsocky
“In the 1970s and 1980s, a blizzard of ‘chopsocky’ TV shows and films, such as the 1982 Jet Li film ‘Shaolin Temple,’ helped to sear the Buddhist legends into the popular imagination, both in China and abroad.”
Geoffrey A. Fowlers and Juliet Ye, “Kung Fu Monks Don’t Get a Kick Out of Fighting,” The Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2007
Chopsocky refers to “a genre of exaggerated martial arts films made primarily in Hong Kong and Taiwan during the 1960s and 1970s.” The term was coined by writer David J. Fox at Variety magazine, and may be a blend of chop suey, “a mixed dish served in Chinese restaurants in New York and elsewhere, as a Chinese dish (but apparently not known in China),” and sock, “to hit hard.”
cowboy shot
“If a ‘D.P’ – that’s director of photography – calls for ‘a cowboy shot,’ he may not necessarily be working on a Western. ‘When cowboys duel on a Western street, where do they go for their guns? Their holsters. So you have to photograph down almost to their knees. That’s why we call it a cowboy shot,’ he says.”
Bob Thomas, “Sound stage slang,” Sun Journal, October 31, 2005
In Europe, a cowboy shot is known as a plán americain or plano americano.
Dogme 95
“Almost a decade ago, Danish director Lars von Trier co-founded the Dogme 95 movement, which produced an ‘indisputable set of rules’ for filmmakers called ‘The Vow of Chastity.’ Among its ten commandments: ‘Shooting must be done on location’; ‘The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa’; ‘The camera must be hand-held’; ‘Special lighting is not acceptable.’”
Christopher Orr, “The Move Review: ‘Dogville,’” The Atlantic, August 24, 2004
Dogme 95 was founded in 1995. Dogme is the Danish word for dogma, “authoritative teaching or doctrine; a system of established principles or tenets.”
fake Shemp
“As well as having Campbell in the lead, this particular effort was written, directed and produced by one Josh Becker who had served as second unit lighting technician and sound man on The Evil Dead and who would go an to collaborate with Raimi and Tapert on a number of occasions. He was a ‘fake shemp’ in Evil Dead II, for example, whilst he has also directed one of the Hercules pilot movies and an episode of Xena.”
Anthony Nield, “The Evil Dead,” The Digital Fix, October 5, 2005
Fake Shemp is “the term for someone who appears in a film under heavy make-up, filmed from the back, or perhaps only showing an arm or a foot.” The term was named for The Three Stooges’ Shemp Howard, who died suddenly. Shemp’s stand-in was used “appearing only from behind or with an object obscuring his face.”
grindhouse
“Grindhouses, which got their name from the bump-and-grind stripteases they featured in their previous life as burlesque houses, were seedy, rundown movie theatres in the 1970s where low-budget exploitation films titillated undiscriminating audiences with sex and violence.”
Warren Clements, “Here’s to the grindhouse – in all its nasty, loopy glory,” The Globe and Mail, October 7, 2010
The advent in the 1980s of home video and cable TV threatened to make grindhouses obsolete.
it girl
“Clara Bow, still showing the flash of beauty she displayed as the ‘It Girl’ of Hollywood’s flaming past, emerged from self-imposed obscurity Monday to bury her husband of 30 years, Lieut. Gov. Rex Bell of Nevada.”
“Clara Bow, ‘It Girl’ of Movies, Beautiful at Husband’s Funeral,” St. Joseph Gazette, July 10, 1962
It girl is “a term for a young woman who possesses the quality ‘It’,” or an attractive quality difficult to describe or express. The term was coined either by Rudyard Kipling around 1904 or British novelist and scripwriter, Elinor Glyn, in her 1927 film It, which starred Clara Bow, who afterward became known as the It Girl.
J-horror
“Arguably the greatest film of the so-called J-horror wave of the late ’90s and early 2000s, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Pulse’ brought the current of apocalyptic dread that runs through Japanese pop culture into the Internet age with a vengeance.”
Andrew O’Hehir, “Japan’s cinema of disaster, from Godzilla to J-horror,” Salon, March 15, 2011
J-horror refers to the genre of Japanese horror films that tend “to focus on psychological horror and tension building.” Although such films gained popularity in the 1990s, the term seems to have originated in the early 2000s. The earliest citation we found was from The New York Times: “[Director Hideo Nakata] is credited as one of the creators of a new, scarier, psychological horror genre known as J-horror, with less splatter and a lot more dread.”
J-horror may be a play on an earlier term, J-pop, coined in the 1990s and referring to popular, non-traditional, Japanese music.
Kubrick stare
“[The Shining] also has what Roger Ebert describes as The Kubrick Stare, with a character – in this case Torrance – staring into camera as he goes mad, with his head down and his eyes looking up.”
James White, “7 Respected Directors Who Did Horror,” Total Film, July 3, 2009
The Kubrick stare refers to director Stanley Kubrick. In Vincent LoBrutto’s 1999 biography of Kubrick, the stare is referred to as the Kubrick crazy stare. Kubrick’s cinematographer Douglas Milsome said that in Full Metal Jacket, Vincent D’Onofrio “flashes what people are now referring to as the ‘Kubrick crazy stare.’ Stanley has a stare like that which is very penetrating and frightens the hell out of you sometimes.”
MacGuffin
“But the microfilm that the bad guys are smuggling out of the country — that’s just what Hitchcock called the MacGuffin, the pretense for the movie, the silly excuse upon which he pinned his real story: a man is mistaken for another man and nearly murdered because of this mistake.”
“The Mother of All Horror Films,” Newsweek, January 6, 2010
World Wide Words says the first recorded usage of MacGuffin was by Alfred Hitchcock in 1939, who described it as “the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story.” However, the origin of the term is obscure.
magical Negro
“Perhaps it’s time for the ‘magical negro’ to retire. Just in recent years, this mythical figure has come to the aid of a number of cinema’s troubled whites: a golfer (The Legend of Bagger Vance), a shallow executive (The Family Man), an uptight attorney (Bringing Down the House), and The One (The Matrix-es).”
Tricia Olszewski, “Film Review: Black Snake Moan,” Washington City Paper, March 2, 2007
The term magical Negro was coined by director Spike Lee in a 2001 speech at Washington State University, in which he expressed disgust with “a recent trend toward characters he called ‘the super-duper, magical Negro,'” characters who “have amazing powers that benefit white people, but not blacks,” similar to “the age-old image of the slave who loves slavery.”
manic pixie dream girl
“Who’s just as cute as a button? Who’s the most deliciously delirious young woman, always up to her false eyelashes in madcap romps? It’s the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, of course.”
Neda Ulaby, “Manic Pixie Dream Girls: A Cinematic Scourge?” NPR, October 9, 2008
The term manic pixie dream girl was coined by film critic Nathan Rabin in 2007 regarding Kirsten Dunst’s character in the film Elizabethtown, “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”
martini shot
“I stuck around after even after I wrapped to see the martini shot of the entire show. I could feel director Jack Bender’s resistance to call ‘print’ on that last take. In fact I’m pretty sure he asked for one more take to delay the inevitable.”
Eric Ditzian, “’Lost’ Star Jorge Garcia Pens Farewell To The Island,” MTV.com, March 21, 2010
A martini shot refers to the last shot of the day. According to Dave Knox, author of Strike the Baby and Kill the Blonde: An Insider’s Guide to Film Slang, “The last [shot] is a martini because the next shot is out of glass.”
mockbuster
“The ‘mockbuster’ is a film based on the story of a big blockbuster movie, which is cheaper, shorter and is usually released straight-to-DVD long before the original is anywhere close to coming out in the shops.”
Fiona Pryor, “Spoofing the big film blockbuster,” BBC News, May 17, 2010
Mockbuster is a blend of mock and blockbuster, a film “that sustains widespread popularity and achieves enormous sales.” It’s also known as a knockbuster, a blend of knockoff, an unauthorized imitation, often poorly-made, and blockbuster.
mockumentary
“What Reiner did not foresee was that in its 25-year existence, ‘Spinal Tap’ has influenced both the way we tell stories—Michael Schur, creator of ‘The Office,’ recently said the mockumentary is his preferred storytelling format—and the way we understand them.”
Jennie Yabroff, “The Real Spinal Tap,” Newsweek, April 10, 2009
Mockumentary is a blend of mock and documentary. As for first use, while the OED notes appearances of the word in 1965, the word may have gained popularity with the 1984 film, This is Spinal Tap.
nuke the fridge
“The story isn’t going to set the world on fire, but ‘Tintin’ is still a hell of a lot more entertaining than 2008′s ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,’ a movie so miscalculated it inspired a new variation on ‘jumping the shark.’ Now the moment when franchises officially run out of good ideas, they ‘nuke the fridge.’”
Matt Singer, “Indiana Jones and the razor-sharp criticism,” IFC.com, December 26, 2011
The term nuke the fridge was coined in 2008 “in the wake of ‘Indiana Jones the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,’ in which Indy survives an atomic bomb blast by hiding in a refrigerator.”
oater
“The craggy, mellowing Eastwood directs himself admirably in this scenic, first-class oater [The Unforgiven], which strikes an ideal balance between character piece and action film as it portrays a rapidly changing way of life.”
John Farr, “The Hard-Won Legacy of Gene Hackman,” The Huffington Post, March 21, 2010
An oater is “a movie about frontier or cowboy life; a western,” and is named for “the prominence of horses, known for their taste for oats, in such films.” The term originated in 1946. See also horse opera.
Oscar
“The golden guy known to the world as the Oscar, the real star of Sunday’s Academy Awards, has become a Hollywood icon over the past 82 years, but the origin of his name has been lost in time.”
“Oscar: Hollywood’s golden mystery man,” The Independent, March 2, 2010
The Oscar is “a statuette awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” first awarded in 1929, and not named Oscar till the early 1930s. According to Andy Bowers, there are multiple claims to the origin, including actress Bette Davis remarking on the resemblance between the statue’s behind and her first husband’s, Harman Oscar Nelson; columnist Sidney Skolsky referring to an old vaudeville line, “Will you have a cigar, Oscar?”; and Academy librarian Maragret Herrick noting the small gold man bore a resemblance to her uncle Oscar.
quota quickies
“The standard histories maintain that there wasn’t much worth seeing [in prewar British cinema]: this was, after all, the era of the ‘quota quickie,’ cheap little movies made solely to fulfill the demands of the 1927 Cinematographic Film Act, which required that 5 percent of the movies on British screens actually be British.”
Dave Kehr, “New DVDs: Early British Cinema,” The New York Times, September 29, 2008
Quota quickies may be likened to B-movies, low budget movies with poor production values.
romcom
“Most romcoms attempting that delay tactic instead give us screaming matches, ridiculous misunderstandings and other exasperating nonsense that bring us to the brink of loathing.”
Jennie Punter, “Just Wright: The right mix for a slamdunk romcom,” The Globe and Mail, May 14, 2010
Romcom is a blend of romantic comedy, “films with light-hearted, humorous plotlines, centered on romantic ideals such as that true love is able to surmount most obstacles.” The term romcom seems to have originated in the late 1990s regarding films such as You’ve Got Mail and One Fine Day.
sexploitation
“The cinema’s biggest hits were underground classics such as Thundercrack and Cafe Flesh; John Waters’s 70s trash trilogy Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living; and the work of sexploitation king Russ Meyer.”
Tony Paley, “Cinema of sin: London’s old Scala picturehouse,” The Guardian, July 31, 2011
Sexploitation is a portmanteau of sex and exploitation, and refers to “exploitative use of explicit sexual material in movies.” It attests to 1942.
spaghetti western
“Sergio Leone, the Italian director who gave class to the term ‘spaghetti western,’ has made some weird movies in his day but nothing to match ‘Once Upon a Time in America,’ a lazily haullucinatory epic that means to encapsulate approximately 50 years of American social history into a single film.”
Vincent Canby, “Movie Review: Once Upon a Time in America,” The New York Times, June 1, 1984
A spaghetti western is a “a low-budget Western movie produced by a European (especially an Italian) film company.” The term originated in 1969.
Spielberg face, the
“‘Nowadays, it seems you can’t have a spectacular special effects action sequence without a Spielberg face to cue you to be in awe,’ Mr. Lee writes.”
Melena Ryzik, “Staring in Awe? It’s ‘the Spielberg Face,'” The New York Times, December 19, 2011
The Spielberg face, which refers to director Steven Spielberg, was coined last year by Kevin B. Lee who compiled a video essay of these close-up shots of actors with “eyes open, staring in wordless wonder in a moment where time stands still,” a look that “has come to be shorthand for a cinematic discovery on the part of the characters and the audience.”
Wilhelm scream
“A single scream, recorded for the 1951 film ‘Distant Drums,’ has made its way into dozens of films, games and TV shows. Afficianados call it the ‘Wilhelm Scream’ and have cataloged many of the films in which it appeared, from Hercules to Pirates of the Caribbean, The X-Files to the short ‘Golden Dreams’ film at Disney California Adventure.”
Cory Doctorow, “Wilhelm Scream – Hollywood’s favorite scream,” Boing Boing, November 29, 2006
The Wilhelm scream was created by sound designer Ben Burtt in 1977, “which he called ‘Wilhelm’ after the character that let out the scream in ‘Charge at Feather River.’”
wuxia
“Through martial arts practice the Wuxia hero becomes, in effect, superhuman. Lightning-fast reflexes allow for the ‘zhao’ fighting style, turning everyday objects into lethal weapons, whether thrown or wielded. Opponents can be paralysed with a single accurate blow or avoided by scaling walls or through the power of flight.”
“House of Flying Daggers,” Spiked, December 23, 2004
Wuxia, which is Chinese in origin, also refers to literature, Chinese opera, and video games. Wu translates as “martial, military, armed,” while xia translates as “honorable, chivalrous, hero.”
This list is far from complete! What are some of your favorite movie words?
Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. If we like it, your tweet will appear on our blog.
Here are our favorites from last week:
Thanks to everyone for playing! You’ll have another chance this week to perfect your word of the day perfect tweets. To get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.
Chances are you’re caught up on the anachronisms of Downton Abbey, between Ben Zimmer’s Visual Thesaurus post, his talk with NPR, his post for Language Log that goes beyond the nitpickery, and Fritnancy’s post on the 1918 anachronism, contact. But what about the words and phrases the show has gotten right?
From obsolete medical terms to nautical sayings to phrases which may be common to Brits but are novel to these American ears, we’ve gathered them here, including a couple of terms that no one on Downton Abbey should be saying unless they own a time machine.
Spoilers may follow.
UPDATE: We corrected aerosyphilis to be erysipelas. Thanks to our readers for the helpful comments.
any port in a storm
Cora: “Is [Edith] really serious about [Sir Anthony]?”
Violet: “Any port in a storm.”
Episode 7, Season 1, November 7, 2010
Any port in a storm is an idiom that means “an unfavourable option which might well be avoided in good times but which nevertheless looks better than the alternatives at the current time.” The first record of the phrase is from 1749.
banns, the
Cora: “To live with him? Unmarried?”
Sybil: “I’ll live with his mother till the banns are read.”
Episode 6, Season 2, October 30, 2011
The banns, often referred to as the banns of marriage (attested from the 1540s) is “the proclamation of intended marriage in order that those who know of any impediment thereto may state it to the proper authorities.” The word comes from the Old English bannan, “to summon, command, proclaim,” and is no longer required for “a valid civil marriage in England, Scotland, or the United States.”
batman
Anna: “He was Lord Grantham’s batman when he was fighting the Boers.”
Episode 1, Season 1, September 26, 2010
A batman is “a British military officer’s orderly,” whose “duty is to take charge of the cooking utensils, etc., of the company.” The word first appeared in 1755, and comes from the late 14th century word for “pack-saddle,” bat. Bat in this sense comes from the Latin bastum, “stout staff,” with the sense of lifting up or offering support.
Blighty
O’Brien [to Thomas]: “What about your Blighty?”
Episode 1, Season 2, September 18, 2011
In this context, Blighty is short for blighty wound, “a minor wound. . .serious enough to take a soldier out of combat.” Blighty originally referred to “Great Britain, Britain, or England, especially as viewed from abroad,” and is a corruption of the Hindi vilāyatī, “foreign.” According to the Oxford Dictionary blog, Blighty was first recorded in print in 1915.
blub
Mary [to Matthew]: “Blub all you like. And then when Lavinia’s here, you can make plans.”
Episode 4, Season 2, October 9, 2011
Blub means to “to cry, whine, or blubber,” and originated in 1894. Presumably blub is short for blubber, which comes from the Middle English bluberen, “to bubble.” Blubber meaning “to cry, to overflow with weeping” is from the 15th century.
canvass
Sybil: “I want to do some canvassing. The by-election’s not far off.”
Episode 6, Season 1, October 31, 2010
To canvass means “to solicit or go about soliciting votes, interest, orders, subscriptions, or the like,” and originated in the 16th century. The word comes from canvas, “a fabric woven in small square meshes” (which comes from the Latin cannabis, “hemp”), with the idea that “to toss in a canvas sheet” can mean “to shake out, examine carefully,” which is perhaps connected with “shaking out” votes.
chivvy
Isobel [to Cora]: “It was [cousin Violet] who drew my attention to the plight of the refugees. I feel very guilty since I chivvied you, and now I’m jumping ship, but I can’t run Downton as well.”
Episode 5, Season 2, October 16, 2011
To chivvy means “to coerce, as by persistent request,” and originated in 1918. The word is an alternative of chevy, “to chase about or hunt from place to place; throw or pitch about; worry.” Chevy comes from chevy chase (not that Chevy Chase), “a running pursuit,” which probably comes from the 15th century The Ballad of Chevy Chase, which tells “the story of a large hunting party upon a parcel of hunting land (or chase) in the Cheviot Hills, hence the term, Chevy Chase.”
dole
Violet [to Mr. Travis]: “You cannot imagine we would allow you to prevent [William’s marriage from] happening in case his widow claimed her dole?”
Episode 4, Season 2, October 9, 2011
Dole is a chiefly British term referring to “the distribution by the government of relief payments to the unemployed,” as well as “a portion of money, food, or other things distributed in charity.” The word comes from Middle English dol, “part, share.” The phrase on the dole, “receiving financial assistance from a governmental agency, such as a welfare agency,” originated in the 1920s.
dressing gong
Cora: “Now I’m going up to the rest. Wake me at the dressing gong.”
Episode 2, Season 1, October 3, 2010
The dressing gong, according to David Durant’s Where Queen Elizabeth Slept and What the Butler Saw, was “an essentially Victorian feature of a large household,” and would be rung “one hour before dinner was to be served,” again “when dinner was served,” earlier for luncheon, “but never for breakfast.”
dropsy
Isobel: “Is the dropsy of the liver or the heart?”
Episode 2, Season 1, October 3, 2010
Dropsy is an obsolete medical term for “a morbid accumulation of watery liquid in any cavity of the body or in the tissues,” now known as edema. The word dropsy comes from the Greek hydrops, with hydro- meaning “water,” and -ops meaning “face.”
drudge
Mr. Bryant: “In the world as it, compare the two futures. The first as my heir, educated, privileged, rich. Able to do what he wants, to marry whom he likes. The second. . .as the nameless offshoot of a drudge.”
Episode 6, Season 2, October 30, 2011
A drudge is “one who toils, especially at servile or mechanical labor; one who labors hard in servile or uninteresting employments; a spiritless toiler.” The word is attested to the late 15th century and may be related to the Old English dreogan, “to work, suffer, endure.”
erysipelas
Isobel [to Mosely]: “Erysipelas is very hard to cure. We should be able to reduce the symptoms but that might be all we can do.”
Episode 4, Season 1, October 17, 2010
Erysipelas is “a disease characterized by a diffuse inflammation of the skin and subcutaneous areolar tissue.” The word comes from the Greek erysipelas, which may come from erythros, “red,” and pella, “skin.” The disease is also known as St. Anthony’s fire, “said to be so called,” according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, “from the tradition that those who sought his intercession recovered from that distemper during a fatal epidemic in 1089.”
fall like ninepins
Robert: “Good heavens, everyone’s falling like ninepins.”
Episode 6, Season 2, October 30, 2011
To fall like ninepins is a British idiom that means “to fall, break or be damaged in large numbers.” Ninepins is a game like bowling played with nine pins, and attested to the 1570s.
fighting fit
Anna: “Mrs. Patmore’s fighting fit again.”
Episode 7, Season 1, November 7, 2010
Fighting fit, which seems to have originated as a military term, means to be “very fit; in the peak of condition.” “As the pressure is brought to bear, there is coming a strain between the fighting-fit who are single and those who are married.” Recruiting at Home, Fielding Star, February 1916
guinea a minute
Carson: “You didn’t know [Mary] when she was a child, Mrs. Hughes. She was a guinea a minute then.”
Episode 6, Season 2, October 30, 2011
Guinea a minute means something or someone that is great fun, and worth a “guinea a minute.” A guinea was “a gold coin issued in England from 1663 to 1813 and worth one pound and one shilling.” “That day made a high festival for her, and, to use her own expressive phrase, ‘was worth a guinea a minute to her.'” Letters of Chauncey Wright, 1878
lead someone down the garden path
Daisy: “I feel I’ve led him up the garden path with all that nonsense.”
Episode 4, Season 2, October 9, 2011
To lead someone down the garden path means “to deceive, hoodwink,” and seems to attest to the early 1920s. This episode takes place in 1918, making this phrase a possible anachronism.
light the blue touchpaper
Violet [to Lavinia who is playing a gramophone]: “I’ll stand well clear when you light the blue touchpaper.”
Episode 6, Season 2, October 30, 2011
The full phrase is light the blue touchpaper and retire immediately or light the blue touchpaper and stand well clear. Touchpaper is “paper steeped in niter so that it catches fire from a spark and burns slowly, used for firing gunpowder and other explosives.”
The phrase is said when “doing something risky,” according to A Dictionary of Catch Phrases by Eric Partridge. Also according to Partridge the phrase didn’t gain popularity till the 1930s when the BBC radio show, Band Waggon, used it as a catchphrase. The episode takes place in 1919, signalling a possible anachronism.
like it or lump it
Robert: “And if his grace doesn’t like it, he can lump it.”
Episode 1, Season 1, September 26, 2010
The phrase like it or lump it means “to accept a situation whether one agrees with it or not.” The phrase attests to the early 1800s.
no names, no pack drill
Matthew: “I suppose [my mother is] driving cousin Cora mad.”
Mary: “No names, no pack drill.”
Episode 2, Season 2, September 25, 2011
According to World Wide Words, no names, no pack drill seems “to have been of First World War origin,” and means “that if nobody is named as being responsible, then nobody can be punished, the point being that in some situation or other it’s wisest not to name the person being discussed.” Pack-drill was “a military punishment in which the offender is compelled to walk up and down for a certain number of hours in full marching order, with arms, ammunition, knapsack, and overcoat,” and originated in the 19th century.
penny dreadful
Daisy [referring to the Titanic]: “All them people, freezing to death in the midnight icy water.”
O’Brien: “Oh, you sound like a penny dreadful.”
Episode 1, Season 1, September 26, 2010
A penny dreadful is “a cheap pulp novel produced in 19th century Britain,” and seems to have originated in 1870. It was also known as a penny horrible, penny awful, penny number, and penny blood.
posh
Branson [to Sybil]: “Flattered is a word that posh people use when they’re about to say no.”
Episode 1, Season 2, September 18, 2011
Posh means “smart and fashionable,” but also “snobbish, materialistic, prejudiced, under the illusion that they are better than everyone else,” especially in Scotland and North England.
The word attests to 1914. The origin is obscure. The Online Etymology Dictionary says there is “no evidence for the common derivation from an acronym of port outward, starboard home, supposedly the shipboard accommodations of wealthy British traveling to India on the P & O Lines (to keep their cabins out of the sun),” and that the word is more likely from the 1890 meaning of posh, “a dandy,” which comes from “thieves’ slang meaning ‘money’ (1830), originally ‘coin of small value, halfpenny,’ possibly from Romany posh ‘half.’”
shipshape and Bristol fashion
Mary: “Carson and I were just making sure that everything was shipshape and Bristol fashion.”
Episode 3, Season 1, October 10, 2010
Shipshape and Bristol fashion means “tidily tied down and secure.” The phrase seems to have started out as two separate phrases, shipshape which came about in the 17th century, and Bristol fashion in the 19th century. Bristol is an old English seaport.
sprat to catch a mackerel
Mrs. Patmore: “He knows this is just the sprat to catch the mackerel.”
Episode 6, Season 2, October 30, 2011
A sprat to catch a mackerel (sometimes throw out a sprat to catch a mackerel) refers to the “sacrifice [of] something of little value in the hope of gaining something better.” A sprat is “a small marine food fish,” while a mackerel is another kind of fish. The phrase dates from the 19th century.
start of the grouse
Violet: “We’ll give her till the start of the grouse.”
Episode 6, Season 1, October 31, 2010
The start of the grouse refers to the start of the grouse hunting season, also known as the Glorious Twelfth, usually used to refer to August 12th, and seems to date back to 1831.
stranger things happen at sea
William: “[My mother] hopes one day that I might be first footman, or even get to be – ”
Mary: “Carson had better watch out.”
William: “Stranger things happen at sea.”
Episode 6, Season 1, October 31, 2010
Stranger things happen at sea is an idiom that refers to a seemingly implausible event or outcome that may in fact be possible. The origin seems unknown, as far as we could find, although we did locate this citation from September 1911: “We’ll go and take a close look. There may be a little mountain of dollars waiting to be picked up yonder. Who knows? Stranger things have happened at sea.”
swag
Cora: “Now a complete unknown has arrived to pocket my money, along with the rest of the swag.”
Episode 1, Season 1, September 26, 2010
Swag here refers to “plundered property; booty; boodle,” and originates from 1839. The word may be Scandinavian in origin.
termagant
Violet: “Poor Dr. Clarkson. What has he done to deserve that termagant?”
Episode 2, Season 1, October 3, 2010
Termagant in this context means “ boisterous, brawling, or turbulent woman; a shrew; a virago; a scold,” and comes from the capitalized word referring to “an imaginary deity, supposed to have been worshiped by the Mohammedans, and introduced into the moralities and other shows, in which he figured as a most violent and turbulent personage.” The origin of the name is unknown, although there is a variety of speculation.
that’s your lot
Mary: “All right. One song, and that’s your lot.”
Episode 3, Season 2, October 2, 2011
That’s your lot means “that’s all you’re going to receive, so don’t expect anymore,” and seems to have originated around 1920. As this episode occurs before 1920, this phrase may be a bit late for the show’s time period.
Tommy
William: “You won’t let a Tommy kiss his sweetheart when he’s about to fight the Hun?”
Episode 1, Season 2, September 18, 2011
Tommy is a “colloquial name for a British soldier during the world wars.” The word originated in 1884 and comes from Thomas Atkins, “the sample name for filling in army forms.” Tommy gun is unrelated and is short for Thompson gun. Hun is a disparaging term for a German, “applied to the German in World War I by their enemies because of stories of atrocities,” likened to the atrocities of the warring ancient tribe of Central Asia.
two a penny
Mary: “Butlers will be two a penny now they’re all back from the war.”
Episode 6, Season 2, October 30, 2011
The phrase two a penny means “very common, cheap.” Also ten a penny. Ten-a-penny is also “a soldiers’ nickname for the pompom gun.”
Uncle Tom Cobley
Sybil: “My answer is that I’m ready to travel, and you’re my ticket, to get away from this house, away from this life – ”
Branson: “Me?”
Sybil: “No, Uncle Tom Cobley.”
Episode 6, Season 2, October 30, 2011
Uncle Tom Cobley “is used in British English as a humorous or whimsical way of saying et al, often to express exasperation at the large number of people in a list.” The name comes from a Devon folk song, Widecombe Fair, published in 1890 by Sabine Baring-Gould in his collection Songs of the West.
weekend
Matthew: “There are plenty of hours in the day. And of course I’ll have the weekend.”
Violet: “What is a weekend?”
Episode 2, Season 1, October 3, 2010
Weekend – previously week-end – attests to the 1630s and was originally a word of north England “referring to the period from Saturday noon to Monday morning.” The word “became general after 1878.”
Anything we missed or got wrong? Let us know!
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What is love? En Vogue sang about it, poets have mused on it, and people look it up in the dictionary. Here’s our attempt to understand what exactly love is.
The word love comes from the Old English lufu, “love, affection, friendliness.” The Greek root for love is philia (see this list for lots of examples) while the Latin root is amare, which gives us words like amorous, paramour, amiable, and more.
Puppy love, which goes back to at least 1834, is “adolescent infatuation,” and was also once known as calf-love, presumably modeled on the overeager, needy behavior of puppies and calves. A crush, first recorded in 1884, is a “temporary infatuation” while a man crush (which seems to have originated around 2005) is when a straight man has “a crush-like but non-sexual feeling of attraction toward and admiration for a man.” A man crush may result in a man date and possibly some bromance.
Limerence is a type of unrequited love. The word was coined by psychology professor Dorothy Tennov who claimed that the word “has no roots whatsoever” and “no etymology whatsoever.” To carry a torch for someone means “to love or to be romantically infatuated with, especially when such feelings are not reciprocated,” and may come from the “the Greek and Roman tradition of a wedding torch.” This idiom gives us torch song, “a song, often sentimental, lamenting an unrequited love,” which seems to have originated in 1927.
Few of us are lucky enough to experience love at first sight, or as the French say, coup de foudre, literally “stroke of lightning.” How about yuanfen, “a relationship by fate or destiny”? Or koi no yokan, “the sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall into love”? (Be sure to check out the rest of Big Think’s list for more untranslatable foreign love phrases.)
If you’re a flirt, you’re “one who plays at courtship.” Flirt originally meant “to turn up one’s nose, sneer at” (1550s), then “to rap or flick, as with the fingers” (1560s). By the 1560s, flirt as a noun came to mean “a pert young hussey,” and by 1777 the verb sense came to mean “play at courtship,” which may have been influenced by Old French fleureter, “talk sweet nonsense,” or “to touch a thing in passing.”
If you like to flirt, you also like to mash (check out our blog post on letters and notes for the etymology). Or maybe smirting, a blend of smoking and flirting, is more your thing. Smirting was coined in Ireland after “the introduction of the pub and restaurant smoking ban in January 2004.” There’s also smexting, smoking and texting, a more solitary activity, unless of course you’re engaging in sexting or textual intercourse (in which case you may want to save your cigarette for afterward).
If you prefer a real date, try cyberdating (especially since it’s now apparently the second most common way for couples to meet); speed dating, “an organized event in which prospective romantic partners meet each other through a series of short one-to-one meetings”; hyperdating, “dating many different people over a short period of time”; intellidating, “dating that emphasizes intelligence, particularly by attending lectures, readings, or other cultural events”; or niche dating, “dating people based on a single characteristic, or on a very limited set of characteristics.”
Bad date? Make sure to arrange a rescue call, “a call to a cell phone placed at a prearranged time to give the person being called an excuse to end a date or other social engagement” (not to be confused with a booty call), especially if you end up with a toxic bachelor, “an unmarried man who is selfish, insensitive, and afraid of commitment.”
Or perhaps you’re a quirkyalone, “a person who enjoys being single and so prefers to wait for the right person to come along rather than dating indiscriminately,” or a leather spinster, a woman “who is happily unmarried and has no desire to seek a mate.”
Most of us have heard enough about cougars and MILFs, but how about a manther (a blend of man and panther), “a middle-aged man who seeks sexual or romantic relationships with significantly younger women,” or a Mellencamp, “a woman who has aged out of being a ‘cougar’,” named for singer John Cougar Mellencamp. (In case you were wondering, another, far less-SFW eponym is santorum, named for Rick Santorum, and which we’ll refrain from defining here.)
Hear wedding bells? Men might want to consider a management ring, an engagement ring for men. And ladies? Try not to morph into bridezilla, part bride, part Godzilla, a phrase which seems to have originated in the mid 1990s. But it’s okay if you have an office spouse, “a co-worker with whom one has a very close but nonromantic relationship.”
Whew! Love is complicated.
Happy Valentine’s Day, or if you prefer, happy Galentine’s Day.
Special thanks to Word Spy.