h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The BBC talking about 'snark' seemed to think it was NEW and yet all of us have obviously been using 'snarky' for years.
Perhaps the use as a noun ('a snark') is new.
What do you use 'nark' to mean?
And speculate on 'wuss' for me, please.

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.

Lewis Carroll

Isn't 'wuss' a tamed version of the genitalia word, used (originally) by Americans to indicate cowardice?

Interestingly, in Brit-Eng, which has now adopted the AmEng usage, **** implies something far worse than coward. I understand that in AmEng, **** is reserved as an insult exclusively for women.

The idea of WIMP being an acronym started my grey cells speculating as to whether it was sort of based on WASP but with things like "immature" and "male" - nah. I gave up after reading Phil's explanations.

Interesting - I've always wondered if the plural of (the PC) mouse is mice.

Those are the only two wimp acronyms that I know of.

I use mice as a plural for mouse for both the furry and electronic variety.
eg "we've got mice running round again"
"there is a box of spare mice in the cupboard, use one of those"

Time for another outing of one of my favourite jokes:

Zookeper, writing letter:

'Dear sir, Please send me two...mongooses. No, that's not right...'

'Dear sir, Please send me two...mongeese. No, no, no...'

'Aha! Dear sir, Please send me a mongoose. Sincerely, T Cooper. PS Send me another one.'

The plural of computer mouse is computer mice. They are named after real live mice so they use the same rule.

The plural of mongoose is mongooses. This comes from an Indian word and it is only coincidence that it ends in the same goose sound as the bird goose. If it was spelt monghus, we wouldn't be confused.

I remember when both WIMP acronyms were invented, and each of them was presented tongue-in-cheek because they had invented an acronym which was the same as an existing word. The real word wimp is older, although how much older I don't know. I remember using it in the late 70s.

"The Bellman" is the other name I thought of using as my h2g2 nickname, after the character in "The Hunting of the Snark". The Bellman was a wise and benevolent leader of the crew, and obviously knew a lot more than he ever said. I also used to ring the bell in my choir to signal the end of coffee break, until I mislaid the bell. I've used a triangle ever since (arguably the same shape as a gnomon).

The Bellman is the coordinator of the Jurisfiction department in Jasper Fforde's 'Thursday Next' series.

(Jurisfiction are agents who deal with crimes taking place within fiction. I think there's also a sundial outside their HQ, which is Mansfield Park... it would be easier for you to read the books than it would be for me to explain.)

>> The real word wimp is older...<<

Without actually consciously thinking it, I'd assumed it was some sort of back-construction from whimper. But now I think about it that would result in a wimp being a whimperer.

~jwf~

>> If it was spelt monghus, we wouldn't be confused. <<

Except for those who would insist on the plural being monghi.

~j~

I inherited a Shorter Oxford Dictionary, which is 3,700 A4 pages, so it is quite a comprehensive work. But it's always been on a high shelf where I couldn't reach it easily. Now I've moved it to beside the computer. Let's see what it says about "wimp" ...

"Origin uncertain, perhaps from whimper."

But it does say that an alternative spelling is "whimp".

>> And speculate on 'wuss' for me, please. <<

For now I'll have to support Edwardo's theory of the cowardly variation but I can't shake a nagging worry there's a sort of Polish undertone in the phonetics.


~j~

First let me say how prescient (if dull by comparison to gnomon) it would have been had you chosen The Bellman all those years ago, for indeed you have proved to be: "a wise and benevolent leader of the crew, and obviously knew a lot more than he ever said."

But you sometimes worry me with things like:

"I also used to ring the bell in my choir to signal the end of coffee break..."

Why would people need to be told they'd finished their coffee? The cups themselves will give every evidence of being empty in their own good time; your clanging about is at best redundant and potentially quite supercilious. But I can see that perhaps a bell was necessary to summon the non-coffee-drinkers back from assorted distant places where they might have wandered off for cigarettes or sex.


~jwf~

And keep that OED handy mate!

Got that OED handy?

Dicdotcom has a long entry on 'wile', especially a graduated list of synonyms for its meaning as an artifcie, an alluring, an enticement, a deception, a seduction, etc. Women and the devil are cited as having wiles.

And at the bottom of the entry, it also lists (without caution, comment or judgment) 'wile' as a verb in the phrase to wile away the hours.

So I looked up 'while':

Wikipeeja mostly makes strong comment on the ambiguity of its modern usage: "...nowadays legitimately be used in the contrastive sense of although or whereas.." warning of potential ambiguity. But the entry makes no mention of 'wile'.

Meanwhile back at dicdotcom they suggest a couple dozen uses of 'while' from 'wothwhile' to 'all the while', all of them mostly meaning the passage of time. And then it proceeds to condemn the use of 'wile' in 'wile away the hours'. A seeming contradiction to their other entry on 'wile'.

So can I while away the day? Or should I continue to wile it away?


~jwf~

According to World Wide Words, you can do either (or both). You can find the article here: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-whi3.htm (to save me having to do lengthy quotes).

When it comes to the origins/use of words and phrases, I refer to World Wide Words or A Phrase A Week before I go to Wiki. I find they're more reliable.

The example given as the first cited usage of wile to mean while is actually a fair, if feminine, use of wile in the meaning "to beguile, entice, or lure (usually fol. by away, from, into, etc.): The music wiled him from his study." (as found at dicdotcom). I don't think the lady was thinking of time at all except perhaps as a secret pun.
ie:
“He persuaded his sisters, therefore, to walk out with him, to wile away at once expectation and retrospection”.

All the later citations - Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens and Rider Haggard... and later, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - are just bad spellers then. Their editors and publishers must share the blame while we are now free to correct the error before it does any pernament (sic) damage.

~j~

My neighbour has just brought me some clock instructions which have been translated from Chinese. He was brought up short by no.2:'Set up up the sound of one team, the alarm dripping makes a noise for one minute'
I am more intrigued by 'embezzling sleep: open or close down embezzling sleep alarm'

The reason I am posting this in the British English thread is that there are more Chinese "speakers of English" than native speakers. It is also to give you some idea of what I've been decoding for the last ten years. Actually, this isn't too bad - more vocab than grammar.

My children have a new verb: To vee, meaning to go up against; to compete against.

Usage:

'Charmander is going to vee Blastoid'

'Can I vee you at backgammon?'

From 'versus', obviously.