The Lexicographer's Rules

I want to point out that if all of North America had a mother like Mimi Smartypants the continent would be full of highly comic Chinese-American preschoolers. I point this out only because Mimi writes well, gives me a laugh, and has a book that you should be reading. Her web site is one of the few that has held my attention for years.

I’ve never met her—though I sent her fan mail and she replied—but I feel certain her blog will fit quite nicely into the “friends” section of your RSS reader or blogroll. Incidentally, even though there’s no link to it on her page, Diaryland does provide her with an RSS feed. It shows only the first few lines of the posts, but it’s a good way to find out when she’s updated (if you choose not to subscribe to her notification email list).

This post from alt.usage.english demonstrates that most dictionaries are rarely, if ever, made completely from scratch:

“Here’s the whole genealogy: The ‘Macquarie Dictionary’ is an expansion of the ‘Hamlyn Encyclopedic World Dictionary,’ which was based on Clarence Barnhart’s ‘American College Dictionary.’ This connects to information I contributed to Wikipedia: The ‘American College Dictionary’ was a stripped down revision of the ‘New Century Dictionary,’ which was an abridgement of the ‘Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia,’ which was an expansion of the ‘Imperial Dictionary,’ which was an expansion of Noah Webster’s ‘American Dictionary.’”

“People will still say that when you ask them,” Dr. Rosenberg said. “Textbooks are full of it.” In a hundred years, I bet books will still be incorrectly explaining why ice is slippery.

This is how it works in the popular language trades, anyway. Terms that have solid, reliable, near-certain histories are still often accompanied in print by specious, spurious, and sophistic histories that nobody of any repute or authority does or could support.

A few books do a very good job of trying to propagate the correct word histories. Dave Wilton’s Word Myths (published by my employer) and Michael Quinion’s Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds (called Port Out, Starboard Home outside of the U.S.) are just two.

But they’re not enough. The old stories persist. Bad print sources are constantly taken as authoritative. People who issue only baloney are taken as authoritative. Crackpots come up with new, equally unprovable, theories.

One truly authoritative source was Allen Walker Read, who spent decades working out the origin of “OK” and other terms. Any language scholar who works with word histories—and some popular language writers—will instantly tell you that he nailed the origin of “OK” with the most certainty one could ever expect. But the demonstrably false etymologies persist now just as much as they did during Read’s lifetime.

In 1992, he wrote a letter to Professor Rowland Berthoff of Washington University in St. Louis. It responds to Berthoff’s charges that Read’s work on “OK” shows a 35-year gap and that no one called Martin Van Buren “Old Kinderhook,” and to the statement that he, Berthoff, preferred the Scots “Och, aye” as the origin of the term.

The whole of Read’s letter is worth reading (and is reprinted in full in Milestones in the History of English in America, which collects much, if not all, of Read’s work that appeared in the scholarly journal American Speech), but this particular passage has always struck me:

“In making such a statement you are a disgrace to your profession. Shame on you! Shame on you! We are dealing here with matters of historical fact, and your statement of ‘preference’ shows that you are either weak-minded or dishonest (or both)....

“Please do not think that I am being absolutistic in my outlook, for I believe that we live in a world of probabilities.”

The passage has admirable vigor, but most of all it supports evidence-based opinion while at the same time defending against any claims of perfect understanding. Read, in fact, seemed always willing to overturn his opinions in the light of new evidence. 

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.”

Donald Rumsfeld, in a speech filled with the usual half-truths and hand-waving, says that American needs more and better propaganda to win the world over to our point of view.

That will surely do the trick, won’t it? It doesn’t ever seem to occur to triumphalist blowhards like Rumsfeld that perhaps the best course of action is to change our ways. That what we need is not to talk differently, but to act differently.

The only smart thing the hack politician from Illinois says is that “some humility is in order”—actually, what he says is, “I suggest that some humility is in order, because there is no guide book—no roadmap—to tell our hard working folks what to do to meet these new challenges.”

So I take that back. What he means is that other people, minions of some useless public agency somewhere, need humility. Not him.