The Lexicographer's Rules

“An autopsy, or postmortem, as it is called in Belize, was done and the cause of death was described as traumatic shock.“

A little more than a week ago I posted a list of all the books on my “want” list that I couldn’t find on Amazon.com. One of those was Le pornithorynque est un salopare by Alain Créhange. It’s a dictionary of French portmanteau words.

Today I received a package in the mail postmarked “Paris Saint Laurent.“ It’s a copy of the book from the author himself, signed and everything! Alain writes in a note that he saw on this web site that I wanted it, so…

The book has an attractive cover featuring ink drawings of two platypuses doing it doggy-style.

Another victory for the Internets!

I find it interesting that four years after the last French Francs were withdrawn from circulation, La Poste still gives the price in Francs on the postage sticker under the price in Euros.

The Guardian reports that ten days ago Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez told British Prime Minister Tony Blair to “go to hell.“ It also reports that Spanish words, too, saying they have no direct translation: “váyase largo al cipote.“

To anyone who knows both languages, the English is obviously milder than the Spanish. I was going to tease out a better translation, but Simon Jeffery has already tried to do that on the Guardian’s blog.

In short, Jeffery says it translates as “get stuffed” or “fuck off.“ This is based on translations of the word cipote, which has several. In the dictionary of the Royal Academy of Spain (which does not permit direct linking to entries), one of them is marked specific to Venezuela: para insultar a alguien sin nombrarlo, that is, to insult someone without naming them. As Jeffrey points out, the dictionary gives several other meanings, one marked as vulgar: miembro viril, the organ of virility, or the penis.

Reuters has it slightly different, not only in spelling, but in translation: “¡Váyase al zipote (diablo)!“ The dictionary of the Royal Academy of Spain does not have zipote, nor do any of the Spanish dictionaries I have at home. Reuters has chosen to translate it as “devil.“

Columbian newspaper El Tiempo (which has already taken the story offline), on the other hand, has chosen to translate it as “al carajo,“ which also means “to the penis.“

So I’d say “go to hell” is a safe but not accurate translation. It’s not offensive nor forceful enough. “Get stuffed” is not that common in North America, though it’s widely understood. Perhaps “fuck off” or “go fuck yourself” are better, though few newspapers permit the word “fuck” in their pages. They might permit “go screw yourself” or “screw you.“ Or even “go pound sand (up your ass),“ which I think is probably also a better translation than “go to hell.“

Here’s something that peeves me like a six-wheeled peeling-and-peeving machine: newspapers reprinting email forwards without properly sourcing, dating, or citing them. It’s usually smaller newspapers that have no budgets and few staff, but still. How hard is it to properly find out where a chunk of text came from—a chunk of text that splatted in your inbox from the ether? Did not little green Martians bestow upon us Google for this very purpose?

A favorite to pass around in email and reprint in crappy newspapers everywhere are words taken from the Washington Post‘s Style Invitational in which readers invent new jokey words.

In some cases, the words are attributed to the Post, in some cases not. In this case, they claim “Here are this year’s winners.“ Well, no. They weren’t the winners this year, nor when the list first appeared on Usenet in 2003, when they also were labeled “this year’s winners.“ No, some of those words—like intaxication and reintarnation, appeared in the Washington Post in 1998. Others, like cashtration and beelzebug, seem to not be from the Washington Post at all. Sometime during their eight-year trip through the Internet, they were yanked from another list that has itself been travelling around since 1995, when it appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian newspaper. God and little green Martians only know where that list originated.

It’d all be different if they were, in fact, useful words, but they’re stunt words. They’re almost never used outside of these forwarded lists. They’re like pandas: good for a quick look, maybe an involuntary grin, and then you’re off to the monkey cages to speculate whether 43 bonobos could kill a silverback. Not useful.

People claim to have coined words all the time that they clearly didn’t. Take this example. Peter Engel, the producer of the television show Saved by the Bell, says:

“You have to remember, our target audience was the 12- to 17-year-old age group…We invented the word ‘tween’…Parents trusted us with their children and we didn’t want to betray that trust.“

Maybe he meant “created the tween television market niche,“ but no, he and his people did not invent the word. Tween, “a preteen or a young teenager,“ dates provably to 1946 and perhaps as early as 1941. Tweenie, with the same meaning, dates to 1919 and Tweenager dates to 1949.