The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
Page 21
The Latin livere means “to be blue.” The Old Slavic sliva is “plum.” (A few shots of the liquor called slivovitz will make you either flushed or ashen-faced.) This is cognate with the Old English sloe, a reddish-purple blackthorn berry that gives a sloe gin fizz its color. Whash neksht?
Early usage: a writer named Henry de Knyghton used livid in 1258 to describe corpses. Thomas Norton in his 1477 incunabula best seller, The Ordinall of Alchimy, wrote of “This Waun Colour called Lividitie, In Envious Men useth much to be.” That waun suggests the modern wan, “pale.” James Fenimore Cooper, in his 1841 Deerslayer, had a character “almost livid with emotion,” but never said what color that was; however, Walter Scott’s 1814 use of the word as a modifier of a color—“his trembling lips are livid blue”—suggests to me that the meaning was “pallid, ashen, leaden.”
The lexicographer Frank Abate, former editor in chief of American dictionaries for Oxford University Press, disagrees: “The idea of ‘pale’ in the OED seems to me to be misleading. The image I have is that of a violently angry person, with eyes bulging and a deep reddish color in the face—such a deep color that it suggests bluishness.” There are usages that treat the word as meaning “black and blue, the color of bruises,” and a furious person has long been said to get “blue in the face.”
Fred Shapiro of Yale reports that “the contexts of the many early uses I have examined make it clear that the color associated with the state of livid anger is a pale one.” His citation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1890 “His swarthy features blanched to a livid gray”—with blanched meaning “turned white”—clinches the primary meaning for me: “pale, drained of color.”
This just in: it may not be a color, or lack of color, at all. The word livid has so long been associated with anger that it has lost its coloration and now means “infuriated.”
While we’re hopping mad, turn to another recent statement of President Clinton that in its expression of irritation touches three dialect bases. Addressing the way the media bash candidates in the current campaign, he observed testily: “I think it’s a bunch of bull…. I do not think America is very well served by all this rigamarole…. That’s a bunch of hooey .”
Bull, a truncated form of what used to be called “a barnyard epithet,” is no longer considered a vulgarism. The animal itself is the acceptable euphemism for its manure. (This has not happened with chicken in a similar barnyardism because the name of the animal already has a slang meaning of “cowardly.”)
Rigamarole, which added a syllable to the 1736 rigmarole, means “incoherent harangue; a lengthy, meaningless procedure or tale.” It is derived from rig-my-role, which some etymologists say is derived from a ragman’sroll or backpack containing a variety of unrelated items.
Hooey is a mystery. The synonym for “nonsense, baloney, hogwash” is cited in the OED as coined in 1924 in Plastic Age, by Percy Marks: “My prof ’s full of hooey. He doesn’t know a C theme from an A one.” The poet W. H. Auden derided “Lip-smacking Imps of mawk and hooey,” and the feminist author Germaine Greer in her 1970 Female Eunuch rescued equestrian interests of women from psychological leers with “The horse between a girl’s legs is supposed to be a gigantic penis. What hooey !”
Clinton’s usage echoed that of Harry Truman, who told a 1948 news conference that unless it could be adopted on a national scale, “daylight saving is a lot of hooey.” Origin obscure. My speculation: hoo is a sound made with an exhalation of breath that expresses wonderment or disdain. Hoo-boy! Don’t make such a hoo-hah. (This speculation could be a blinding flash of insight, or … )
“Hooey” is a vulgar Russian term for the male member: “Na hooey”—meaning, “screw it.” “Ne sooey hooey v chai”—loosely meaning “don’t screw around”—literally “don’t stir the tea with your [male member].”
I especially enjoyed your mention of Germaine Greer’s unintentionally ironic, “The horse between a girl’s legs is supposed to be a gigantic penis. What hooey!” Because … it is!
Dick Wallingford
Napa, California
Coincidentally or not, “hooey” bears a strong resemblance to a Russian vulgarism for the penis, which in Cyrillic would resemble something like xyn and is transliterated approximately as “khuy.” It is used in much the same way as we use “hooey” and worse, as in “nyekhuya nye znayet,” which translates quite literally as “He don’t know dick.”
Annie Gottlieb
New York, New York
Lockboxing Day. If any issue dominated the 2000 campaign, it was Social Security; if any cliché dominated, it was “the third rail of American politics”; and if any word was given the glow of energy from that power source, it was lockbox.
It landed in the political lexicon in 1995, as House Speaker Newt Gingrich promised that a spending bill would be amended to include what he called “a lockbox provision” stipulating that no spending cuts would be used to offset tax reductions. This was purely symbolic because government funds are fungible.
Bill Archer, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, used the lockbox in 1999: “We created the Social Security lockbox to lock that money up so it cannot be spent for anything else.” GOP leaders actually used a strongbox as a prop for television coverage.
Bill Clinton promptly adopted the metaphor, leaving the Republicans sputtering. In the 2000 campaign, Al Gore made it central to his stump speech and debate appearances: “I think we need to put Medicare and Social Security in a lockbox. The governor”—Bush—“will not put Medicare in a lockbox .”
The meaning was taken to be “a box with a lock on it; a small safe.” The more specific definition is “a safe-deposit box in a bank.” Especially in the central states, lockbox is an old-fashioned word for “safe-deposit box.” A lockbox is to a safe-deposit box what an icebox is to a refrigerator.
The origin is “a postal box with a window requiring a key for the postal customer to open.” In 1906, Mary E.W. Freeman, in her novel By the Light of the Soul, wrote: “She saw one letter slanted across the dusty glass of the box. It was not a lock box, and she had to ask the postmaster for the letter.” That is, it was a box unlocked to the postal worker, as distinct from a locked box rented by the customer.
Now, it means, generally, “strongbox,” or more specifically, “a political metaphor for a trust fund that cannot be spent for purposes other than specified in the politician’s promise.”
Lookism. Communism is all but dead, and socialism is passé. Capitalism is doing fine, but as an attack word it has been replaced by market economy. Has the suffix -ism lost its sting?
In politics, ism-itis is receding, but in reference to forms of discrimination, the beatism goes on. On the analogy of racism, a term that began as racialism in 1907 but dropped the second syllable in 1935, we have sexism (1968) and ageism (1969). And now a relatively new entry:
“We face a world,” says Nancy Etcoff, a psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, “where lookism is one of the most pervasive but denied prejudices.” She is author of Survival of the Prettiest; though her title is Darwinian, her message bewails the evolution of the power of beauty.
Oxford’s 1999 20th Century Words, by John Ayto, defines lookism as “prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of appearance (i.e., uglies are done down and the beautiful people get all the breaks).” The lexicographer’s earliest citation was from 1978 in the Washington Post Magazine, which reported that fat people coined a defensive word: “lookism—discrimination based on looks.”
When the GOP candidate George W. Bush flashed a half-smile that struck some as a smirk, he was widely derided for this facial expression. “Bush isn’t the only presidential candidate to suffer from this elaborately sanctioned lookism,” wrote Julia Keller in the Chicago Tribune. “Former Republican hopeful Steve Forbes endured numerous remarks about his blinkless stare … while Al Gore has been called ‘wooden’ so often that he probably measures himself by the board foot.”
The word’s usage is t
ransatlantic. “Lookism is a crime,” a writer in London’sDaily Telegraph observed in 1991, “on the same level as racism, sexism, ageism, heterosexism, classism, etc.” In Barre, Maine, last year, a workshop was held on the topic “Today’s Pressures: Drugs, Alcohol, Sex and Lookism .”
A Reuters reviewer of the new Oxford Compact English Dictionary had a bright lead: “So there you are, all decked out in chuddies, carpenters and a shrug with a brand-new buzz cut, and for some reason your best friend refuses to talk to you. It is probably a serious case of lookism .”
OK: chuddies are underpants, carpenters are pants with loops for tools, a shrug is a tight-fitting cardigan and a buzz cut is a close crew cut. I’ll also pass along the OCED’s screenager, “Internet- or computer-addicted teenager.”
The extension of lookism is already in circulation: if you call out to someone you consider in any way attractive, “Hey, good-lookin’,” you are a lookist .
There is no Barre, Maine. There is a Barre, Vermont, a lovely town nearMontpelier, a likely site for a drug workshop. Or, there is a Barre, Massachusetts,a village near Worcester. No powwow here.
I’d guess you meant Barre, Vermont!
Dickson Scott
Wallingford, Connecticut
I’ve always thought that the correct term should be looksism, since the offenseis invidious discrimination on the basis of looks. It was as looksism that I first encountered the concept, during the mid-’70s, in the form of awisecrack by my then wife, Michele Slung, who was doing a “where-will-itallend” riff inspired by the proliferation of racism-based grievance words such as “ageism.”
Lookism, strictly speaking, should refer to invidious discrimination on the basis of a look on a person’s face. Negative responses to Bush’s alleged smirk, Cheney’s alleged sneer, Clinton’s alleged pout, and Quayle’s alleged deer-in-headlights expression would, thus, all fall into the category of lookism. On the other hand, disliking Lieberman because he’s kind of funny-looking, or liking John Kerry because of his Dudley Do-right chin, would be looksism. But I guess I’m fighting a losing battle on this one.
Hendrik Hertzberg
Editor in Chief, The New Yorker
New York, New York
You identified blond/blonde as a potentially new lookism, declaring that blond is used “to impute fun-loving characteristics.” It is my understandingthat blond/blonde is the only term in the English language taken directlyfrom the French, blond being the masculine, blonde the feminine.
I have several blonde daughters none of whom embody the flightiness implied in your use of the word.
Frank O’Donnell
Rockville Centre, New York
An inveterate ogler is a lookist. A man who hires a woman because she is pretty should be called a looksist.
Professor Morton G. Wurtele
Berkeley, California
The suffix “itis” always refers to the presence of an inflammatory condition(e.g., appendicitis: inflammation of the appendix; tonsillitis: inflammation of the tonsil, etc.).
The suffix “osis,” on the other hand, merely denotes the presence of a condition (e.g., thyrotoxicosis: the presence of a toxic condition of the thyroid gland; diverticulosis: the presence of pouches known as diverticula in the wall of the intestine … if, however, the diverticula become inflamed, we then have diverticulitis).
In your second paragraph, therefore, we should be referring to ism-osis, although I must admit that it can be inflammatory in another sense!
Noel H. Seicol, MD
Rye, New York
Lounge Act. The opening salvo at the phrase foreign service was fired by Secretary of State Colin Powell. He proposed to strike those words from the medal established by Congress in 1999 to honor federal employees killed or injured while serving under chiefs of mission abroad. It was Powell’s plan to change the name of “the Foreign Service Star” to “the Thomas Jefferson Star.”
That triggered a protest to the secretary from Marshall P. Adair, president of the outfit that still calls itself the American Foreign Service Association. “I write to express AFSA’s strong disagreement,” he began, “with plans … to strip the words ‘Foreign Service’ from the Foreign Service Star.” Like a good diplomat, he suggested a compromise: “The Thomas Jefferson Star for Foreign Service.”
Powell went along with this suggested fallback position, but grudgingly: in reply, he wanted foreign service officers to know that the medal, a kind of civilian Purple Heart, was for “recognizing the risks and dangers to all United States government civilians assigned to our embassies and consulates” and not just FSOs alone. That playing down of the phrase foreign service was what civil service employees wanted. (Everybody denies it, but many civil servants, derogated as bureaucrats by the elite foreign service corps, still refer to the diplomats as cookie pushers.)
But in his campaign to expunge foreign service from the Foggy Bottom vocabulary, Powell then went a couple of bridges too far. After seventy-seven years of referring to “Foreign Service and Civil Service employees” in official documents, State Department testimony began substituting the phrase “International Affairs Officer,” lumping the two groups together. And “Foreign Service Day” was mysteriously postponed for renaming.
The spark that ignited the fury of our diplomatic corps-and enlisted the support of the American Academy of Diplomacy as well as the Council of American Ambassadors—was an act that offended the dignity and ruffled the feathers of everyone with a pair of striped pants in the closet. The State Department, protested Adair of the AFS in a follow-up letter to Powell, “has removed the name ‘Foreign Service Lounge’ from that facility (after a half-century of usage).”
And what was the former Foreign Service Lounge, whose name recalls the camaraderie and easing of tensions of generations of diplomats, to be called? It would be rechristened the Employee Service Center .
“Some foreign service officers believe the new name has the charm of an auto repair shop,” wrote Steven Mufson of the Washington Post, who broke the story and fingered Patrick Kennedy, assistant secretary for administration, as the perpetrator of the name change. Others did not like the implicit put-down in employee; I am told that others hypersensitive to harassment found a barnyard allusion to the verb meaning of service in the new title.
With his left flank crumbling, Powell pulled back. He explained that his onetime use of “international affairs officers” was merely “to shorten the sentence in which the phrase appeared” and denied that he was trying to merge the two services. As for the former Foreign Service Day, he thought it would “enhance teamwork” to be more inclusive and invite the civil servants.
“Assistant Secretary Kennedy did change the name from ‘Foreign Service Lounge’ to ‘Employee Service Center,’” he confirmed. “His motive was to update the name from something that connotes a bar or rest area to an accurate reflection of what the area truly is—i.e., a center that provides services for all employees.”
Now to the crux of the controversy, in which lexicologists can elbow aside diplomatists: Is the noun lounge taken to mean cocktail lounge, denoting “bar”—that is, a place where alcoholic beverages are served, life histories are recounted to bartenders and singles mingle and tingle? Does it also connote, in Powell’s genteel usage, “rest area” (derived from restroom, euphemism for “toilet, loo, lavatory” or “baby changing-room”)? Or is it just a place in which to sit around, to loll about dreamily or, in more up-to-date parlance, to hang out?
In the language of languor, lounge leads all the lollygagging. The intransitive (very inactive) verb is from the 15th-century Scottish dialect noun lungis, meaning “laggard, lingerer,” rooted in the Latin Longinus, the apocryphal name of the soldier who lanced Jesus in the side, and was influenced by longus, “long,” associated with “slow.” The easygoing verb is defined in the OED as “to move indolently, resting between-whiles or leaning on something for support,” which grew out of an earlier meaning, “to skulk, to slouch.”
Thus, Powell’s concern for the controversial connotation of conspicuous conviviality is correct. The noun lounge reeks of booze, as any visitor to the United Nations Delegates’ Lounge in New York can testify. Less justifiable for the name change at Foggy Bottom is the connotation of “toilet.” To call a restroom a lounge is to euphemize euphemism, to touch up the painting of the lily. Few people ask, “Which way to the lounge?” They prefer, “Is there somewhere I can wash my hands?” or “Whereza john?”
You don’t hear about lounge lizards anymore. That was a World War I derogation of lizard-lidded gigolos who hung about chichi bars and nightclubs in search of rich women to seduce and bilk. The phrase had a nice alliterative ring to it. Its nearest replacement today is directed to the position rather than the purpose of the lounging: couch potatoes. At the Department of State, they can be found staring at the screen in the Employee Service Center.
Have you observed yet another use of the word “lounge”? It is incorrectly,though appropriately, used to name the piece of furniture, the seat of whichextends several feet. Thus, chaise longue has become, except for the very fewpurists, chaise lounge.
Madeline Hamermesh
Minneapolis, Minnesota
I was in the automobile business (sales) for several years. Anyone who would drive onto the new or used car lot and cruise around without getting out oftheir car, just to check what was for sale without daring to make an overture of any kind of interest by setting foot on the ground, was known as a lot lizard (the bane of all car salesmen).